Negroland, by Margo Jefferson

Negroland is a memoir of growing up in the 1950s and 1960s as an upper-class black girl in Chicago. It’s about race, class, position, white socks, prejudice, hair oil and its stains, integration, politics, fabulous clothes, architecture, representation, style, standards and history. Jefferson mixes poetry and lyrics with historical extracts and retellings of events from … Continue reading Negroland, by Margo Jefferson →

H G Wells: Mr Britling Sees it Through

101 years after publication, this week's Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up is H G Wells’s novel Mr Britling Sees It Through. It was sold to a public who really did not know which way this war would go, in a strange category of literature, the in-war novel: neither pre-war, nor post-war. The author does not … Continue reading H G Wells: Mr Britling Sees it Through →

On Poetry, by Glyn Maxwell

This is the prequel, or preceding companion to Maxwell's fantasy creative writing course Drinks With Dead Poets, in which Maxwell writes urgent, obstreperous essays about how to read, write and think about poetry. On Poetry feels like a book written for practitioners at all levels. It’s certainly a hugely useful teaching book, full of admonitions and exasperated noises, … Continue reading On Poetry, by Glyn Maxwell →

Ernest Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream

This post was originally a podcast script, now (2022) tidied up a little since it seems to be one of the most-read posts on this site. Its subject is Ernest Hemingway's novel Islands in the Stream. He is a giant of American literature, and of masculine writing. He wrote men’s books about manly subjects: war, … Continue reading Ernest Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream →

The 1951 Club: Meet the Opies

In this entry for The 1951 Club, I reread The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, edited by Iona and Peter Opie. I love excavating the history behind the relics of history cast up as sayings and idioms, and as nursery rhymes. When I was little, reading the Puffin nursery rhymes book that I still own, … Continue reading The 1951 Club: Meet the Opies →

Selective history in Geoffrey Trease’s The Crown of Violet

This week's Really Like This Book's podcast script catch-up is on Geoffrey Trease's The Crown of Violet (1952), which is set in Ancient Greece, in about 400 BC. Trease should not be confused with Henry Treece, the other English historical novelist of his period filed near him on the shelf. Trease wrote for what we now call … Continue reading Selective history in Geoffrey Trease’s The Crown of Violet →

Borrowed fire at sea: Mark Twain and Arthur Ransome

Missee Lee (1941) is an adventure novel in Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series, one of the two novels in the series whose extraordinary places and events really could not have happened. I don’t know how the Arthur Ransome Society would feel about this theory, but I’ve always held that Missee Lee, like Peter Duck (1932), … Continue reading Borrowed fire at sea: Mark Twain and Arthur Ransome →

Dornford Yates’s Gothic melodramas, in Anthony Lyveden & Valerie French

Prepare for high-stakes romantic melodrama, early 1920s style. This Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up is about Dornford Yates' first two novels. Anthony Lyveden was published in 1921 and its sequel, Valerie French, appeared in 1923: they were written after he had made his name with several collections of brilliant and witty short stories … Continue reading Dornford Yates’s Gothic melodramas, in Anthony Lyveden & Valerie French →