Early this year I launched my Year of Great Reading course, and many of you have been receiving a Literary Readers Guide each month as part of your annual subscription. Many thanks for all the wonderful comments showing how much you have been enjoying it. Read more
Childhood Reading
Every so often you read a book that makes you just long to sit down with its author and have a lengthy chat. That’s how I felt when I finished reading Lucy Mangan’s wonderful Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading. Read more
More about Louisa May Alcott
Did you know that this year Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women turns 150? She was a remarkable woman, who didn’t really want to become famous for a book about girls (she preferred boys, or writing Gothic thrillers), and yet her novel about four sisters growing up in the American Civil War has been much loved by generations of readers. Read more
Poem of the Month, November 2018 – Nursery Rhymes
I have been reciting nursery rhymes to my gorgeous granddaughter, Arabella (this is her above, enjoying a book), and it’s made me think about the intriguing origins of some of them. So instead of one poem this month, I am going to tell you about some of these often rather disturbing rhymes so familiar from childhood. Read more
Companion Guide – Muriel Spark & ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’
First published in 1961, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie brought Muriel Spark international fame. Time magazine chose it in 2005 as one of the 100 best novels in English from 1923 to the present, and the Modern Library ranked it 76th in its ‘100 Best Novels of the 20thC’. Read more
Literary Readers Guides for 2019
Come with me on a literary journey through 2019. Together we will explore a fabulous selection of 19th and 20th C classics.
Each month you’ll receive a reading guide covering the life of an author and one of their most popular or important works. I’ll reveal intriguing stories about the author behind the book, analyse the themes and characters in the book, tempt you with film versions to watch, and challenge you with thoughtful discussion questions. Read more
Reading Gives the Green Light
Reading gives the green light to so much pleasure and learning, so I therefore find it entirely appropriate that literary figures can be featured on traffic lights. Read more
The Greedy Queen
2019 sees the 200th anniversary of the birth of Queen Victoria, so we can expect a plethora of books about the Queen who shaped and gave her name to an era. Read more
Films to Look Forward To
Some months ago I recommended the novel Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. Next year we will be able to watch a movie version of the quirky and popular novel. Read more
Poem of the Month, October 2018 – ‘An Arundel Tomb’
English cathedrals often have grave memorials of great beauty and artistic ability. One of my favourites is a tomb in Chichester Cathedral with effigies believed to represent Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel and his wife Eleanor of Lancaster, Read more
Companion Guide – George Eliot & ‘Middlemarch’
Virginia Woolf described George Eliot’s Middlemarch as “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people”. Do you agree? I think Woolf is being too simplistic, but I strongly feel that no intelligent person should go through life without reading this extraordinary book. Read more
What Sort of Reader Are You?
What sort of reader are you? Do you read slowly, savouring every word? Or do you rush through a book and then think about it afterwards? According to the poet Coleridge, there are 4 classes of reader: Read more
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
As someone who struggled with science classes at school, I rarely read books about science, but was recently fascinated by The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. Henrietta Lacks, who I had never even heard of, seems to have been one of the world’s most influential women. Read more
Have you met Maisie Dobbs?
Have you met Maisie Dobbs? She is the character created by novelist Jacqueline Winspear in a series of crime novels set in London between WWI and WWII. Maisie sets up as a private investigator with a Cockney assistant named Billy Beale. Read more
Poem of the Month, September 2018 – ‘No Coward Soul is Mine’
It was Emily Brontë’s 200th birthday recently. She was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, and soon afterwards her parents moved to Haworth, where the Brontë Museum is today. (The picture above is of a sculpture of the three Brontë sisters at Haworth Museum). Read more
