Rose Macaulay’s The Lee Shore

Today's novel from the Really Like This Book's podcast scripts catch-up is about art: buying it, faking it, selling it, advising on it, collecting it, and valuing your life by what you say about it. Rose Macaulay’s novel The Lee Shore really is completely forgotten, but is a fascinating read. It’s one of a clutch … Continue reading Rose Macaulay’s The Lee Shore →

Hugh Walpole’s Fortitude

This Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up is about the 1913 novel called Fortitude by Hugh Walpole, and you need fortitude to finish it, to be brutally honest. It is not a snappy two-hour read. On the other hand, if what you’re after is something for a long wet weekend on your own during which … Continue reading Hugh Walpole’s Fortitude →

Alchemy or witchcraft? Una L Silberrad’s Keren of Lowbole

The Historical Fictions Research Network is holding its second conference this weekend in Greenwich, home of the Meridian and steeped in English history. I will be there, celebrating the launch of the first issue of the Network's scholarly journal, the Journal of Historical Fictions, which I edit, and giving a talk on the relationship between … Continue reading Alchemy or witchcraft? Una L Silberrad’s Keren of Lowbole →

John Buchan and The Power-House

The novel of 1913 that I’m resurrecting from the Really Like This Book podcast scripts is the first modern thriller, The Power-House by John Buchan. This is often overlooked because of its far more famous younger brother, The Thirty-Nine Steps, which was published two years later in 1915. When Buchan wrote The Power-House, he was … Continue reading John Buchan and The Power-House →

E C Bentley and Trent’s Last Case

Sir Humphry Davy Was not fond of gravy. He lived in the odium Of having discovered sodium E C Bentley published his first collection of clerihews in 1905, as Biography for Beginners, and in this he was clearly the inspiration for such other classics of amateur history interpretations as 1066 And All That, and … Continue reading E C Bentley and Trent’s Last Case →

Gene Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer

This podcast scripts catch-up from Really Like This Book is on the first of Gene Wolfe’s epic science-fiction & fantasy tetralogy The Book of the New Sun, The Shadow of the Torturer (1981), the only one of the four I have been able to finish. It is EPIC, a tremendous, sprawling feast of fantastical invention slathered over … Continue reading Gene Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer →

Country journalism: Monica Dickens’ My Turn to Make the Tea

In this excellent newspaper memoir-novel from 1951, it is always Monica Dickens’ turn to make the tea. She is a posh girl, the youngest staff member on the Downingham Post, and the only woman on this very small, local daily paper. She isn’t a campaigning career journalist: she’s really a writer rather than a reporter … Continue reading Country journalism: Monica Dickens’ My Turn to Make the Tea →

Submission and cross-dressing: Tennyson’s The Princess

We're in the 19th century for the Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up, in the Victorian era, when the British Poet Laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published an epic poem called The Princess, on the subject of what to do about bizarre ideas about women's education, independence, and silly things like that. The submission of Victorian women … Continue reading Submission and cross-dressing: Tennyson’s The Princess →

Epic Poems You’ve Never Read 4: Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock

Bring out yer wigs! This week in the Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up we're in the 18th century, enjoying the world of English fops in wigs and frivolous young ladies with nothing to do all day except play cards and drink tea. If you like Georgette Heyer and her pre-Regency romances, this poem is the … Continue reading Epic Poems You’ve Never Read 4: Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock →

Epic Poems You’ve Never Read 3: John Milton’s Paradise Lost

Hail Lucifer! The Really Like This Book podcast script catch-up tackles Milton’s Paradise Lost, that monster epic of the Restoration in which God is the villain, and Lucifer is the first anti-hero. Let’s pause to consider the history. We’re in the seventeenth century, when Britain was split in two by the Civil War, which ended when … Continue reading Epic Poems You’ve Never Read 3: John Milton’s Paradise Lost →