I was disinclined to believe it when my book club readers told me that children no longer read. In my friends’ homes, the Bedtime Story is the main event of the child’s evening. It may start out as part of the evening routine, the carrot to tempt the child up the stairs to bed, but it…
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It was with medical matters on my mind that I watched the film, The Bucket List, this week. The premise was that two men (Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson: the character’s names are instantly forgotten when you have those two in the starring roles), finding themselves with only six months to live, take a trip together, ticking…
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There are few worries in life that be put right by pointing your car in the direction of the A591 heading towards Ambleside with Wanderlust by the Delays playing loudly on the car stereo. An hour and a half after booking into our B & B, we are on top of Wansfell pike with a perfect view…
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I have been watching the series about British Novelists with great interest. I thought that the closest I would ever get to Virginia Woolf was to see her photograph and read the words that she wrote, not imagining that the BBC had footage of an interview with her buried deep in their archives. As the series has…
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An article in yesterday’s Metro about a man who has accumulated a collection of 15,000 Penguin paperbacks – among them the first 2000 titles published – got me thinking about all of the things I have thrown out or given to Oxfam only to regret it. There is a school of thought that says de-cluttering is…
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E M Forster didn’t write another novel after the publication of the hugely successful Passage to India. When interviewed by the BBC, he explained that he didn’t consider himself to be a great novelist because he had only ever managed to tap into three types of people: “The person I think I am, the people who…
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This week, a short business trip took me to the small market town of Holbeach, where I stayed at the Mansion House Hotel. The front of the hotel was adorned with a blue plaque stating that the Nobel prize winner, Sir Norman Angell (1872 – 1967) had been born there (bedroom 2, I am reliably informed). I…
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As I watch the images of flooding in Pakistan, now covering a third of the country, I wonder why I’m not hearing a soundtrack of Peter Gabriel’s ‘Here Comes The Flood’. I don’t think there could be a more suitable charity record.  Don’t be afraid to cry at what you see… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww9JS8dJ9fY&feature=related http://www.oxfam.org.uk/

Debbie Holt recently recommended a work of teenage fiction called How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff as an example of how ‘good’ characters can be good for the story. Whilst I suspect I have outgrown teenage fiction, it was worth reading just for the line, ‘I don’t get nearly enough credit in life for the things I…
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Having read Wolf Hall so late after its publication, I’m not sure that I can add much in terms of praise that has not already been said by the likes of James Naughtie and Andrew Marr.  What I particularly loved is that, unlike other historical novels, the subject matter seemed current and relevant. Where I live in…
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