Serendipity strikes again. I've been editing a book Handheld will be publishing in September 2023, about Hilda Matheson, who was among many other things a lover of Vita Sackville-West, and the Director of Talks for the BBC from 1926 to 1931, for whom Vita and Harold Nicolson, her husband, did online live broadcasts. BBC Director-General … Continue reading Harold Nicolson, Public Faces
Category: H G Wells
Three good books
For a change, here are three books I've read recently that I liked a lot. They are all satisfying, well-crafted reads, and I'm going to keep them all, but I don't have vast amounts to say about them other than 'they're good'. Mary Stewart, Thornyhold Mary Stewart writes about magic so convincingly that there must … Continue reading Three good books
H G Wells is aggravating again: The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman
The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman was published in 1914, and is the story of Ellen Sawbridge who marries her older suitor Isaac Harman when she is 18. He delays the wedding by a few weeks so that the announcement of his knighthood in the Birthday Honours will appear on their wedding day, making her … Continue reading H G Wells is aggravating again: The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman
H G Wells does Lovecraft
The Croquet Player (1936) by H G Wells is set in an alternative universe where croquet and archery have the same exalted sporting status as tennis. It's a novella of serious frivolity, and seems to be most highly regarded now for its apparent foreshadowing of the Second World War. Given its publication date, after six … Continue reading H G Wells does Lovecraft
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
Dorothy Richardson’s Dawn’s Left Hand, and Clear Horizon
With nine volumes of Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage down, and four to go, Dawn’s Left Hand is the one in which Miriam has sex with H G Wells. It’s an extraordinary episode, and if you’ve read H G Wells’ Ann Veronica, you’ll be fuming, because the setting is exactly the same as the attempted rape of … Continue reading Dorothy Richardson’s Dawn’s Left Hand, and Clear Horizon
Dorothy Richardson’s Deadlock, and Revolving Lights
Continuing this series of posts about successive volumes in Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage, here are volumes six and seven, Deadlock, and Revolving Lights. We’re at the halfway mark, and I have to say that this is now a trudge for me. It’s grim duty and a distant curiosity about what will happen next that keeps me … Continue reading Dorothy Richardson’s Deadlock, and Revolving Lights
Reading Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage
This conversation began when Brad Bigelow of The Neglected Books page noticed that I'd reviewed Pointed Roofs, the first volume of Pilgrimage. We began to chat about our respective experiences of reading the books, since he was only five volumes ahead of me, as I posted about Backwater and Honeycomb, and The Tunnel and Interim. … Continue reading Reading Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage
Beginning a festival of Dorothy Richardson: The Tunnel, and Interim
Today begins a total splurge of reviews of the remaining novels in Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage. I've already written about the first volume, Pointed Roofs, and Backwater and Honeycomb. Today I'm tackling The Tunnel and Interim, and next week's posts begin with a long conversation with Brad Bigelow of The Neglected Books Page about how we both read Pilgrimage (more or less … Continue reading Beginning a festival of Dorothy Richardson: The Tunnel, and Interim
Merlin versus the vivisectionists, in C S Lewis’s That Hideous Strength
Today’s letter in the Really Like This Book podcast scripts recap is L, and I’ve gone straight to Clive Staples Lewis. Along with much of the western world, as a child I was deeply into his Narnia stories. As I got older I found them less satisfying, because too many questions kept being thrown at … Continue reading Merlin versus the vivisectionists, in C S Lewis’s That Hideous Strength
Kate Macdonald 