Sarah Lonsdale, Rebel Women Between The Wars

I pre-ordered this book because I’ve been waiting for it for a very long time. Lonsdale has been researching women journalists and journalism in British fiction for much of her career as an academic at City University London, and before that was a journalist writing for a variety of papers and magazines. Rebel Women Between … Continue reading Sarah Lonsdale, Rebel Women Between The Wars →

Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth

I finally finished this immensely thick paperback last night, after six nights of reading. I’m not a slow reader, but the time I took to get through this novel - volume two in The Book of Dust trilogy - was down to its interminability. It is 719 pages long, and concludes nothing in itself, setting … Continue reading Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth →

Bea Howe, A Fairy Leapt Upon My Knee

Bea Howe was Sylvia Townsend Warner's oldest friend. They met in the 1920s when Bea was 19 and Sylvia was in her middle twenties, and Sylvia spent her 84th birthday having a nice quiet day with Bea, shortly before Sylvia died in 1978. When they met is important, because Sylvia would soon publish her much … Continue reading Bea Howe, A Fairy Leapt Upon My Knee →

Bryher (the writer, not the island)

Annie Winifred Ellerman (1894-1983) was a novelist, a literary patron, an heiress, and the devoted lover of the modernist poet Hilda Doolittle (H D). She took the name Bryher to disassociate herself from femininity, one asumes, borrowing the name from one of her favourite Scilly Isles. She married her close friend Kenneth Macpherson, who was … Continue reading Bryher (the writer, not the island) →

Mary Beard, The Invention of Jane Harrison

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 →

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 →

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 →

Alice Jolly: Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile

If the sign of a good book is that, while partway through it, you buy your own copy and take the library copy back, wondering whether to slide a post-it note inside urging the next borrower to do the same; and that you are mentally raking through the names of friends and family who would … Continue reading Alice Jolly: Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile →

Isabella Tree’s Wilding and Tim Flannery’s Europe

These two books about European natural processes are curiously connected, though I had no suspicion of this when I bought them. I was obviously in the mood for a sustained period of browsing on ancient species ecology and the prospects for reversing the mass extinctions caused by people. Looking for hope in the face of … Continue reading Isabella Tree’s Wilding and Tim Flannery’s Europe →