Do people insist on telling you the ending?
Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies
Two of my favourite rooms in the entire world are those in the Orangerie Museum in Paris which hold Monet’s waterlily paintings. They are oval in shape and in each room four stunning paintings are displayed. Read more
Childhood Reading
Poem of the Month, November 2018 – Nursery Rhymes
More about Louisa May Alcott
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
Poem of the Month, October 2018 – ‘An Arundel Tomb’
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
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Emily Brontë & 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
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
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
Do you use bookends?
Do you use bookends, the simple device that buttresses or props up an upright row of books? Bookends are utilitarian, in that they stop a row of books from falling over, but they can also be decorative. Read more
