Back again
It’s a long time since my last blog and I’m sorry for my unexplained absence. There’ve been a number of reasons. My lovely mother-in-law died in April. She was 97 and had had a wonderfully interesting and fulfilling life. She was a GP, qualifying before the war when few women went into medicine. She is […]
Where Have You Been All My Life?
I recently came across a novel so engrossing, so fascinating, and so well written that I was surprised that I had never heard of the writer. I discovered LIGHT YEARS by James Salter, first published in 1976, when Andrew Miller recently picked it for the ‘Book of a Lifetime’ slot in the Independent. It sounded […]
The Love of Books: A Sarajevo Story
Quite by chance I caught this programme in BBC 4’s Storyville slot last Monday and I am so glad I did. It told a gripping story. partly reconstructed by actors, partly told by the people involved. When the young Dr Mustafa Jahic was made Director of the Gazi Husrev-Beg Library in Sarajevo he thought he […]
Crime Fiction Round-up
I’m hoping to get round to blogging more frequently in a few weeks when the renewal period for CWA subscriptions is over. I haven’t been blogging, but of course I have been reading.I was gripped by CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER by Tom Franklin, a worthy winner of the CWA Gold Dagger. It’s sent in rural […]
What a Life!
Second only to the pleasure of reading a great novel is the pleasure of reading a great biography. I read Claire Tomalin’s biography of Dickens over Christmas and I felt a sense of loss when I’d finished it. For over 400 pages I’d been immersed in someone else’s life and though Tomalin tells us what […]
The Book Stops Here?
It used to be that I felt obliged to finish a book once I had started it, but those days have long passed. I have grown fairly ruthless at cutting loose when I’ve had enough and this has happened quite a lot lately. I stopped in the middle of Elizabeth Goudge’s THE DEAN WATCH a […]
Black Like Me
On November 7 1959 John Howard Griffin, a white Texan journalist, checked into a hotel in New Orleans. He had already been taking medication to darken his skin. Now he shaved his head and applied coat after coat of dark stain. When he had finished he looked in the mirror. ‘A fierce, bald, and very […]
Girl in a Green Gown
A few weeks ago I went to the book launch of GIRL IN A GREEN GOWN: THE HISTORY AND MYSTERY OF THE ARNOLFINI PORTRAIT by my friend, Carola Hicks. It was an occasion both unusual and moving: unusual because the Carola could not be there. She died in June 2010 leaving her book almost, but […]
The Most Lovable of Writers
One of the books that I read while on holiday was Trollope’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY. I had read it long ago, but I re-read it with fresh eyes. I first read it as an academic planning a thesis on Trollope and read it this time as a writer. It has its longeurs – discussions of writers long […]
Closing the Bedroom Door
It occurred to me the other day that you know you’ve reached a certain age when you write a sex scene and you’re no longer worried about what your mother will think. No, now you’re worrying about what your children will think. I’m know I’m not the only writer to find it difficult to write […]