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Kate Macdonald

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Tag: post-war

The Countryside Companion

I found this pleasingly hefty but slim volume in The Beaufort Bookshop in Bath, two days after we'd moved (always check out your new city's second-hand bookshops). I do like old editions of nature books, and have a particular keenness for the post-Second World War period, when rationing could be bypassed by going to the … Continue reading The Countryside Companion →

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Kate 20thC, animals, architecture, community life, essays, fashion history, history, nature, outdoor adventure, photography, political / social commentary, sociology, the life of the times, Tom Stephenson 1 Comment May 5, 2018

Rumer Godden, The Greengage Summer

This 1958 novel crackles with foreboding. It is based on the apparently artless retelling by a teenage girl of a summer spent in France with her elder sister and their younger siblings. It seethes with barely understood sexuality, and, in the absence of any reliable and responsible adults, the dangers that Joss and her sister … Continue reading Rumer Godden, The Greengage Summer →

Kate 20thC, bildungsroman, community life, detective, drinking, fashion history, nature, outdoor adventure, passion and secrets, political / social commentary, Rumer Godden, the life of the times 14 Comments December 27, 2017

Penguin New Writing 32: still in 1947

John Lehmann opens this issue’s Foreword by apologising for the sudden disappearance of the coloured plates. They’d vanished in issue 31, presumably a last-minute or force majeure decision, because in this issue the reasons are discussed. All the good colour printers in Britain are booked up for months at a time, so there is no … Continue reading Penguin New Writing 32: still in 1947 →

Kate 20thC, Alan Pryce-Jones, Angus McBean, community life, Dunstan Thompson, essays, Jiří Mucha, John Lehmann, Lucian Freud, Nigel Heseltine, P H Newby, photography, political / social commentary, short stories, the life of the times, theatreland, wartime 3 Comments July 13, 2017November 14, 2017

Penguin New Writing 31, autumn 1947

My feelings about the prevailing mood of the previous issues of Penguin New Writing have been borne out by the Foreword in this issue of autumn 1947, by John Lehmann himself. ‘Your Editor has had a dream. A mad, fantastic dream, not to be credited at all. [there follows a paragraph of escalating impossibilities] That … Continue reading Penguin New Writing 31, autumn 1947 →

Kate 20thC, Annabel Farjeon, baroque and dramatic, Barry Hicks, Dorothy Baker, E Martin Browne, essays, Ghika, Gwyn Williams, Helen Gardner, Henry Reed, history, James Stern, Jocelyn Brooke, John Lehmann, literary history, memoirs / diaries, photography, poetry, political / social commentary, publishing, short stories, Sid Chaplin, the life of the times, thriller, vaguely horror, wartime, William Plomer, William Sansom Leave a comment July 3, 2017November 14, 2017

Penguin New Writing 30

This issue of Penguin New Writing, from spring 1947, has a depth that the previous issues reviewed don’t seem to have achieved. John Lehmann goes all-out in his Foreword by saying that the fires that decimated London’s publishing offices and warehouses in the bombing in December 1940 did ‘the book-trade — and the authors who … Continue reading Penguin New Writing 30 →

Kate 20thC, A C Wann, autobiography, Edward Burra, fine art, Graham Greene, Julian Maclaren-Ross, Leslie Hurry, literary history, memoirs / diaries, middlebrow studies, passion and secrets, poetry, political / social commentary, Sacha Carnegie, short stories, the life of the times, Tom Hopkinson, wartime 1 Comment June 27, 2017November 14, 2017

Penguin New Writing 29, autumn 1946

New Writing, John Lehmann’s influential British literary magazine, first appeared in 1936, and fostered politically Left writers and artists. It stopped publication in 1950, with issue 40, just as Tennessee Williams and John Wain (for example) joined the contributors. I found issues 27 to 40 in an Oxfam shop, and bought them for a fiver. … Continue reading Penguin New Writing 29, autumn 1946 →

Kate 20thC, Angus McBean, community life, Edward Bawden, Helen Gardner, James Stern, Jocelyn Brooke, John Ward, Julian Maclaren-Ross, outdoor adventure, Patrick Greer, photography, political / social commentary, short stories, theatreland, wartime, William Sansom 12 Comments June 19, 2017November 14, 2017
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this is what I write about

1920s 1930s 1950s 1960s aliens Angela Thirkell archaeology architecture Barbara Pym biography birds Cambridge detection Dornford Yates Dorothy Richardson drinking duds family life fantasy farming feminism fiction First World War France gender Germany Harry Potter H G Wells history Ireland Japan John Buchan John Lehmann journalism King Arthur literary history London magic memoir middlebrow murder music myth Naomi Mitchison nature newspapers Paris Penguin New Writing poetry politics post-war poverty publishing Rivers of London romance satire science science fiction Scotland Second World War servants small-town America space opera Sylvia Townsend Warner Terry Pratchett translation travel village life Vulpes Libris Wales wartime witchcraft witches women's history women's lives

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