This is a list of the books I read in 2020 that I still remember with enthusiasm and about which I have something to say. As if we were browsing together in a bookshop, and I'm the irritating one who keeps breaking your concentration to say 'You must read this, it's so good ... Oh … Continue reading 2020: The good books
Farah Mendlesohn, Creating Memory
Farah Mendlesohn has a new book out, and it is a dense deep dive into how the history of the English Civil Wars has been written for children, and therefore for everyone, and what this says about how our understanding of seventeenth-century history has been shaped by its teaching. Mendlesohn is a scholar in the … Continue reading Farah Mendlesohn, Creating Memory
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
Books That Made Me
I have been reading a lot in the last month, but haven't wanted to post Great Thoughts about any of the books, for various reasons: not good enough, a bit obvious, meh. Or, I'm actively pursuing the rights so I can republish them, so I am definitely not letting those cats out of the bag. … Continue reading Books That Made Me
Rupert Hart-Davis, Hugh Walpole
This biography took forever to read. It's dense, in the leisured style of the 1950s (reissued unrevised in the 1980s), and it is very odd to read such a long study of a life that is pretty nearly forgotten now. None of Walpole's novels are in print now, as far as I can see, though … Continue reading Rupert Hart-Davis, Hugh Walpole
Penelope Lively, A House Unlocked
Once again, I am delighted and impressed by Penelope Lively's effortless skill in winding me into her story. In this case, it really is her story. A House Unlocked is her ruminative ramble through British (and Russian) history, prompted by objects, plants and memories of her grandmother's house in rural Somerset, where Lively spent much … Continue reading Penelope Lively, A House Unlocked
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
Rónán Hession, Leonard and Hungry Paul
Thirty-four pages into this excellent Irish novel, I was cackling with laughter for the third time. I was also being paused in my happy reading by moments of piercing empathy. They sat alongside the bursts of humour, deepening the reader’s feelings about the characters and their patient, ordinary lives. The cover shows us a sunfish, … Continue reading Rónán Hession, Leonard and Hungry Paul
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)
