Ben Judah’s This is London

This book has been looking at me for months, sitting on the shelf in an accusing position, in the stack received during and since Christmas and somehow not yet read, because I knew full well it would not be a nice read, not be comforting, not be bedtime reading, not be reading I could prop … Continue reading Ben Judah’s This is London →

Looking into the gutter: Jean Rhys’ After Leaving Mr Mackenzie

I read After Leaving Mr Mackenzie for #ReadingRhys, but, to be truthful, I really don’t think I would have bothered had it not been for that impetus. I tried Wide Sargasso Sea many years ago and didn’t get on with it at all. I don’t even think I finished it. Jacqui suggested this novel as a … Continue reading Looking into the gutter: Jean Rhys’ After Leaving Mr Mackenzie →

So much unhappy beauty: Robin Hyde’s The Godwits Fly

Perhaps I’ve been reading too much Ngaio Marsh lately, but when I saw in the Persephone catalogue that they were reprinting Robin Hyde’s The Godwits Fly (1938), handily on the eve of a trip to London, I went straight to their shop. I had come across references to Hyde’s writing when I was reading a … Continue reading So much unhappy beauty: Robin Hyde’s The Godwits Fly →

George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier

As an antidote or astringent supplement to the estimable The 1938 Club blogging week, I'm posting the last in my miniseries on British political fiction, from the Really Like This Book podcast scripts. Trouble is, it’s not fiction: it’s a polemic, it’s a historical record, and it’s by George Orwell, from 1937. The Road to Wigan … Continue reading George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier →

The stratagems of aristocratic survival, in Colette’s Julie de Carneilhan

This week's letter is C, and today’s author is Colette. Julie de Carneilhan was published in 1941, reprinted by Penguin in the 1950s in an English translation by Patrick Leigh Fermor. Apparently it was filmed in 1950, and in 1990. Leigh Fermor’s translation is over 60 years old now, as timeless as the novel itself, but also not modern; there’s … Continue reading The stratagems of aristocratic survival, in Colette’s Julie de Carneilhan →