Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Music at Long Verney

I pounced on this short story collection in a second-hand bookshop in the Lanes in Brighton, silently crying 'Why have I never heard of you before?' (and on typing that I realised that I really must, MUST join the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society, and did so.) I hadn't paid enough attention to STW's short story … Continue reading Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Music at Long Verney →

Rebecca West: This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund

These two novels are the sequels to West's The Fountain Overflows (1957), a saga about an eccentric and musical Aubrey family in London from the Edwardian period to the Depression. I really loved The Fountain Overflows, but I'm not so sure about its sequels. This may be because they were incomplete on West's death, and … Continue reading Rebecca West: This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund →

The loucheness of the conservative novelist: Angela Thirkell writes about camp

Here's an extract from my next book, due out in July. This bit is about how Angela Thirkell, that most proper and dictatorial enforcer of correct social behaviour in her novels from the 1930s to the 1950s, let herself go when chortling with the girls about sex. Thirkell’s great lesbian creations of Miss Hampton and … Continue reading The loucheness of the conservative novelist: Angela Thirkell writes about camp →

Splendiferous music by Árstíðir

If your musical taste is taken by a group of Vikings singing a cappella in a German railway station, you will like Árstíðir. They’re an Icelandic band, mostly strings players, with a pretty big following, in Iceland, Germany and the US. I now have their third album, Hvel, which was crowdfunded entirely through Kickstarter. I … Continue reading Splendiferous music by Árstíðir →