There Will be Cake
The invitation to the launch of Invisible said ‘There will be cake’ and there was. Delicious cake and lots of it, made by my kind friends, Jo and Sarah. Here I am, wielding a large knife. It was a beautiful summer’s evening. There was plenty of wine – supplied by my hospitable husband. My […]
A Sleepy Summer Sunday
Last week-end in Birmingham I had free time on the Saturday afternoon and I walked into Bourneville and visited Selly Manor, a Tudor manor house. There was hardly anyone else in the house and I had the charming garden completely to myself. I remembered another expedition over thirty years ago in my Birmingham days. On […]
Interviewing crime-writer Kate Ellis
Kate Ellis’s new novel, The Shroud Maker (she is so good at titles) has recently appeared in paperback. She kindly agreed to be interviewed on my blog. I began by asking her how she carves out time to write. What is her writing routine? Over to Kate: How do you carve out time to write? […]
Chagrin in Lichfield
Last week-end I was at a course at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre. It’s always nostalgic being back in Birmingham. I went there at the age of twenty-two to do an MA on Pre-Raphaelite illustration of Shakespeare’s plays and spent the rest of my twenties there. My mother moved there around the same time and stayed for […]
Crime Fiction Round-up
I’ve decided to have an occasional round-up of crime fiction that I’ve enjoyed and I’m featuring three novels today.I came across a review of The Mangle Street Murders by M. R. C. Kasasian on one of my favourite blogs – http://clothesinbooks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-mangle-street-murders-by-mrc – and thought it sounded worth a look. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is set in […]
Goodbye, Kurt
They saved the best until last. Last night’s Wallander was a worthy end to the series. The story was an improvement on some of the previous ones in the series. It had real pace – and a climax that gripped. I won’t give too much away about the plot as not everyone will have caught up […]
On Not Teaching
Yesterday I went to see the exhibition, Cézanne and the Modern, at the Ashmolean. It’s a tedious journey on the train from Chesterfield to Oxford, involving changing trains at Birmingham (a contender for the dreariest station in the country), but it was worth it. Only three rooms, but some amazing Cézannes, and anyway I like […]
Matisse Cut-Outs
This blog is mainly about books, but art means very nearly as much to me. I couldn’t miss the exhibition of Matisse cut-outs at Tate Modern and I got down to see it last week. He is an artist that I love and admire. He said that he wanted his art to be like an armchair […]
It Goes With the Territory
Some years ago I came across a poem by Elaine Feinstein, ‘Getting Older,’ that I very much liked. When more recently I read a review of her memoir, I thought it was a book I’d enjoy. And I did. Feinstein is a distinguished poet, novelist, biographer, and translator of Russian women poets. She got married […]
Comics Unmasked
Last week I went to see a fascinating exhibition at the British Library: Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK. It covered a lot of ground from Punch in the 1840s up to the present and filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. It set me thinking about the part comics have […]