Uncategorised

I read a lot of grown-up books as a child. I now read a lot of children’s books as an adult. My introduction to adult literature actually began as a result of a) a dismal failure in my cultural [...]

I can produce all sorts of excellent literary reasons as to why I love Daphne du Maurier’s 1937 novel Rebecca: that extraordinary tale of a gauche, very young, second wife having to take on not [...]

The Spectator’s review of After the Party is entitled ‘Shades of the Mitfords’ and it is almost impossible to read this novel without thinking of the Mitford sisters, particularly Unity, Hitler’s [...]

Well it isn’t quite as bad as all that, indeed you could argue that it was entirely a work-related escapade, or at least that it was for research purposes. In short, I went (accompanied by the [...]

Well, you learn something new every day. I learned a few days ago that this last week was National Storytelling Week: thank you Twitter. Philip Pullman once said that every teacher ought to be [...]

My father used to say that his sister (aged about 10) saw the film of Dracula in 1931 and was never the same again. Bela Lugosi is surely the iconic Dracula: clad in cape and evening dress, [...]

About this time last year I was reading aloud to my mother as she lay in the final 24 hours of terminal cancer. I read a lot to her in the last ten days. By the time you get to that point, you [...]