Claire Tomalin, A Life of My Own

This very good autobiography by one of our great biographers has a truly terrible photograph of herself on the cover. Claire Tomalin looks tired, as if she's not been looking after herself; she's irritated and preoccupied, but also patient. This is the face of a woman who had recently been widowed, with four children to … Continue reading Claire Tomalin, A Life of My Own →

Vita Sackville-West, Saint Joan of Arc

Vita Sackville-West mostly published novels, but also a few biographies, and this one is apparently the most well-known. I doubt that it's often read: it's long, detailed, has many elegant maps and eleven appendices including family trees and speculative genealogies. It's a proper historian's book, and has probably been superceded several times since 1936. History … Continue reading Vita Sackville-West, Saint Joan of Arc →

Achachlacher, by Emma L Menzies

If you like the gentle narratives about English rural life in the early part of the twentieth century by 'Miss Read', you'll like Achachlacher. It's an epistolary novel about life in the Inner Hebrides, so gentle as to be barely there, and contains hardly anything said in anger, or that might cause controversy. Emma L … Continue reading Achachlacher, by Emma L Menzies →