This is an early book by Mary Beard, from 2002. It costs a LOT for a slow print on demand order from an online bookshop which doesn’t begin with A, ultimately from Harvard University Press. But it’s worth it, I think, and here are the reasons. If you’re interested in Jane Ellen Harrison, one of … Continue reading Mary Beard, The Invention of Jane Harrison
Category: art
Laura Knight, Oil Paint and Grease Paint
I went to the Royal Academy's tiny one-room exhibition of Laura Knight a few weeks ago, and was alerted to the fact that she had written a couple of autobiographies, Oil Paint and Grease Paint (1936) and The Magic of a Line (1965). Laura Knight was made a Dame in 1929, and was the first … Continue reading Laura Knight, Oil Paint and Grease Paint
Jan Morris, Hav
Jan Morris is one of the most familiar names in British travel writing, so I was surprised to find a new work by her that I did not know, Last Letters from Hav. The New York Review Books Original edition - Hav - has a stupendous cover image that relates to the sequel, Hav of … Continue reading Jan Morris, Hav
Margaret Kennedy, The Ladies of Lyndon
I read this in a Dial Press edition of the Virago reprint, with Nicola Beauman's sound introduction from 1981. It is the most satisfying English society novel I've read in a long time, yet is also flawed in its last third with too much exposition, as if Kennedy (this was her first novel) did not … Continue reading Margaret Kennedy, The Ladies of Lyndon
Where are The Women? A Guide to an Imagined Scotland
Poised as I was to fly to Scotland for a pre-Christmas visit, this was an excellent guidebook to dip into. Sara Sheridan decided that a new guide to Scotland was needed, that included all the women who have not been celebrated as they should have been. She was inspired by Rebecca Solnit's map of the … Continue reading Where are The Women? A Guide to an Imagined Scotland
J B Priestley and Jacquetta Hawkes, Journey Down a Rainbow
I found this book of travel writing about the south-west of mid-1950s USA in The Second Shelf, a new antiquarian bookshop in London specialising in works by women. This was only the second book (partly) by a man I've seen there (the other was a lesbian pulp novel apparently written by a man with a … Continue reading J B Priestley and Jacquetta Hawkes, Journey Down a Rainbow
Clare Leighton, Four Hedges
This is a beautiful Little Toller production, a country yearbook from the 1930s, in which the sublime engraver and illustrator Clare Leighton and her husband took on a Buckinghamshire cottage and its garden. They still went to London to work at their professions, but lived part of the week, or month, in the cottage, and … Continue reading Clare Leighton, Four Hedges
