New to me The First Woman, by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi from 2020 was a stunning read, a brilliant novel about modern Ugandan history and social change. When Kirabo is in her teens, her father decides that she will come to live with him in the city, and Kirabo is wildly excited because her father is … Continue reading The Good Books of 2022
Category: Dorothy L Sayers
E C Bentley and Trent’s Last Case
Sir Humphry Davy Was not fond of gravy. He lived in the odium Of having discovered sodium E C Bentley published his first collection of clerihews in 1905, as Biography for Beginners, and in this he was clearly the inspiration for such other classics of amateur history interpretations as 1066 And All That, and … Continue reading E C Bentley and Trent’s Last Case
Woman causes Oxford mayhem: Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson
This Really Like this Book podcast scripts catch-up is about the incomparable Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm, from 1911. Tremble at the tale of her assault on the august traditions of Oxford and its university, when she made every student fall in love with her, and worse, after which she went home to have a relaxing bath before taking … Continue reading Woman causes Oxford mayhem: Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson
Ngaio Marsh’s Death in a White Tie
This week's classic detective fiction podcast scripts catch-up from Why I Really Like This Book is on the tremendous New Zealand author Ngaio Marsh (pronounced NYE-oh). Death In A White Tie (1938) is from the same period as Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise, and shares a theme of a high society drugs racket with Murder Must Advertise and with Darkness … Continue reading Ngaio Marsh’s Death in a White Tie
Josephine Tey’s Miss Pym Disposes
This week on the Really Like This Book's podcast scripts catch-up I am urging you to read Josephine Tey's Miss Pym Disposes. Tey (her real name was Elizabeth MacKintosh) is, I maintain, a better writer than any of her Golden Age detective novelist colleagues. She chose to focus on the detective novel format, but she was … Continue reading Josephine Tey’s Miss Pym Disposes
Bad drugs and fast cars: Dorothy L Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise
Getting our knees wet in the sea of this mini-series on great detective classics, this podcast scripts catch-up from Why I Really Like This Book is about that perceptive novel about the advertising industry by Dorothy L Sayers, Murder Must Advertise (1933). This is a novel about office lives and 1930s high society, with a darkness underneath that comes from … Continue reading Bad drugs and fast cars: Dorothy L Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise
T H White’s Darkness at Pemberley
T H White's Darkness at Pemberley, from the Why I Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up, is the second of his two detective novels. Neither did particularly well. He is most famous for The Sword in the Stone in 1938, which he rewrote and expanded into the tetralogy The Once and Future King. Disney made its most … Continue reading T H White’s Darkness at Pemberley
The performances of Roderick Alleyn: Ngaio Marsh at her best
I accidentally began rereading Ngaio Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn detective novels before Christmas, and have now, a month later, read them all, bar the four that I didn't have which have yet to arrive via Abebooks. These novels are Marsh’s most well-known works, superb Golden Age detective novels in the classic whodunit style, published from the 1930s … Continue reading The performances of Roderick Alleyn: Ngaio Marsh at her best
The Golden Age of Murder
Martin Edwards' The Golden Age of Murder is a fat and heavy hardback (the paperback is due out in 2016) endorsed by Len Deighton, as a study of the British writers who created the Golden Age of detective fiction in the 1920s and 1930s. It’s an absolute treasure chest of writers’ names and novels that have … Continue reading The Golden Age of Murder
Philip Davies’ Lost London
In a former life in the 1990s I used to work for English Heritage as one of its select and overly academic team of ‘monograph’ editors. We published the formal reports on nationally funded excavations and headline-making building-related stories. My four colleagues were the proper archaeologists, so I was the stand-in for architecture. I like architecture, because … Continue reading Philip Davies’ Lost London
Kate Macdonald 