In 1959, Peter Haring Judd became a history teacher in a secondary school in Maidaguri, the capital of Bornu province in northern Nigeria. He had completed his US military service and was looking for something to do with his life that the Peace Corps, to be founded two years later, would offer younger generations of … Continue reading Peter Haring Judd, Figures in a Spare Landscape
Several years ago, I was interviewed about my practice as a print culture researcher. I've updated my Q&A preparation notes, as a reintroduction to why I read the way I do, and why I spent so many years as an academic researching a particular kind of book. What do you do and why? I was … Continue reading Recovery research and publishing
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
This strange and beautiful novel was published in 1921, perfectly positioned among Stella Benson's Living Alone (1919), David Garnett's Lady Into Fox (1922) and Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes (1926). All belong to the category of fantasy that allows the fantastical to live alongside the mundane, without comment or criticism, although mild resentment may be present, … Continue reading Walter de la Mare, Memoirs of a Midget
The Flint Anchor was published in 1954, six years after The Corner That Held Them. Both novels are the fruits of Sylvia Townsend Warner's cultivation of a dispassionate attention to the passing of time, and a refusal to show a narrative attachment to any one character. This was not conducive to my teenage reading, so I'm … Continue reading Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Flint Anchor
Sibyl Sue Blue is a sergeant in the police, a mother and a widow. (Or is she?) When she cruises bars in disguise to picks up the information she needs, she manages to look decades younger than she really is with wigs and makeup (and by choosing rather dim men). She adroitly refuses advances from … Continue reading Sibyl Sue Blue
Many years ago I bought a curiosity in a book sale: The Book of Beauty, published in 1961 by the newspaper magnate George Newnes, and edited by Eileen Allen. It’s still available on rare book sites but I’ve never seen it anywhere else, and it has fascinated me. The photographs are particularly arresting, the kind of … Continue reading The Book of Beauty
