Daughter of the Desert, by Georgina Howell

This biography of Gertrude Bell begins slowly, rockets up to high speed, but goes a bit flumph at the end. As the Guardian's review back in 2006 noted, Howell seems to regard Bell's thwarted love affair with a married man as the central moment of her subject's life, and is not interested enough in the … Continue reading Daughter of the Desert, by Georgina Howell →

The Flying Duchess

Mary Russell is a complicated subject. She was a Victorian archdeacon's daughter, and married Lord Herbrand Russell, the second son of the 9th Duke of Bedford, in 1888 in India where he was an aide-de camp to the Viceroy. Her brother-in-law died a few years after he succeeded to the title, and so Mary, a … Continue reading The Flying Duchess →

Ursula Buchan, Beyond The Thirty-Nine Steps

Does the world need a new biography of John Buchan? There have been three so far: a very thin and respectful one written a few years after his 1940 death, in an atmosphere of sincere grief and hagiography. Then there was Janet Adam Smith's 1965 biography, invited and facilitated by the family, which was the … Continue reading Ursula Buchan, Beyond The Thirty-Nine Steps →

The 2017 Vondel Prize

The Vondel Translation Prize - a bi-annual prize established by the Society of Authors - has been awarded to the American translator David McKay, the translator of Stefan Hertmans' novel Oorlog en Turpentijn / War and Turpentine. It's set during before, during and after the First World War, in Flanders and is based on the … Continue reading The 2017 Vondel Prize →

Wonder Woman, screenplay by John Buchan

I saw Wonder Woman last night, and have things on my mind (there will be SPOILERS if you read on). There were only seven people in the cinema (Tuesday night, 17.40 showing, my own private cinema), but by god the Dolby surround was loud, we needed more bodies to absorb the boom. The Themiscyra parts … Continue reading Wonder Woman, screenplay by John Buchan →

H G Wells: Mr Britling Sees it Through

101 years after publication, this week's Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up is H G Wells’s novel Mr Britling Sees It Through. It was sold to a public who really did not know which way this war would go, in a strange category of literature, the in-war novel: neither pre-war, nor post-war. The author does not … Continue reading H G Wells: Mr Britling Sees it Through →

The Early Life of James McBey: An Autobiography

When I had a paper-round in Aberdeen at the age of 13, I regularly delivered the local free sheet to an ordinary Victorian terraced house in the west end that was then called James McBey House. I had no idea why the house had been called that, and I still don’t, since McBey, the First World … Continue reading The Early Life of James McBey: An Autobiography →

Dorothy M Richardson’s Backwater, and Honeycomb

These are the second and third novels in Dorothy M Richardson’s Pilgrimage sequence, and, like the first - Pointed Roofs (1915) - they are as realist as one could hope for in a modernist novel. The narrative is straightforward, albeit entirely through the perspective of the narrative voice, Miriam Henderson, a girl from Barnes now marooned in a … Continue reading Dorothy M Richardson’s Backwater, and Honeycomb →

Resisting war: Rose Macaulay’s Non-Combatants and Others

Today’s Really Like This Book's podcast script catch-up about political fiction is about a novel that's 100 years old: Non-Combatants and Others, from 1916. It’s by the British novelist, journalist and traveller Rose Macaulay, and is set in London during the early part of the First World War. I need to pause here to crow (SQUEEE!) and … Continue reading Resisting war: Rose Macaulay’s Non-Combatants and Others →

Hilda Vaughan’s The Soldier and the Gentlewoman

The Soldier and the Gentlewoman, originally published in 1932, puts a pitchfork in the romantic notion that soldiers returning from war would find a willing wife and a grateful village waiting for them. Hilda Vaughan writes a disturbing defence of the woman’s right to inherit the family estate, and disrupts the social niceties by showing what … Continue reading Hilda Vaughan’s The Soldier and the Gentlewoman →