Each summer, a number of public figures are asked to offer their suggestions for an ideal summer reading list, usually by some national daily newspaper wanting to pad out their Sunday supplements. When I read the said lists, I am often left deflated by recognising so few of the books on their lists although I […]
The English Bookshop
Driving back to St Antonin Noble Val last week to re-stock and prepare the bookshop for another season, I was reminded of just how seldom it is that an idea matches up to the reality. Owning a bookshop is one of those rare exceptions. The sentiment, so often expressed by friends and visitors who see […]
Dylan Thomas
Browsing the shelves of our bookshop in St Antonin Noble Val, (http://www.theenglishbookshop.org/) I was intrigued to find a book of essays published in 1956 that gave an early assessment of Dylan Thomas’s poetry after the outburst of elegies and appreciations that immediately followed his death three years before. The writer of the article, David Daiches, […]
The Powys Brothers
Every year, I break off my holiday in France to return to England for the Powys Conference. For those who don’t know (and many don’t), the Powys family consisted of the eleven children of the Reverend C F Powys and his wife Mary Cowper Powys, and included amongst their number a headmaster (Littleton), a talented […]
Christian Karlson Stead
‘Reading T. S. Eliot and reading about T. S. Eliot were equally formative experiences for my generation. One of the books about him which greatly appealed to me when I first read it … was The New Poetic by the New Zealand poet and critic, C. K. Stead…’ Seamus Heaney, The Government of the Tongue […]
Elizabeth Myers
Elizabeth Myers Elizabeth Myers (1912 – 1947) was an English writer whose tragically early death from tuberculosis at the age of 34 years robbed denied her readers and admirers of one of the most promising writers to emerge from the war years. She was a formidable and original literary talent as is evident from […]
Place of Return – Ellie Catton
Last night, Ellie Catton won the Man Booker Prize for 2013, becoming the youngest ever winner with her book ‘The Luminaries’. Weighing in at a massive 832 pages (the longest ever), it is the second book of a precocious author who, at 28 years old, is the youngest winner of the prestigious literary prize. ‘The […]
Starting Late
Recently, we stayed at a newly opened hotel in Ely, named ‘The Poets House’ (without the apostophe). When I asked why it was so-named the answer was that a notable writer had lived there previously, hence the connection. The writer in question was Sybil Marshall whose claim to fame was not as a poet, but […]
The Native Returns
We seem to be in the midst of a resurgence of interest in Thomas Hardy, both at home and abroad. The recent filming of a new version of ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ in Dorset has certainly stirred local interest while even further abroad there have been signs of a renaissance of interest in the […]