Cider with Rosie

Cider with Rosie

I don’t do many reviews, and those I do are likely to be old favourites from my bookshelf which might be overlooked today by busy people who weren’t around when they were first published. “Cider with Rosie”, by Laurie Lee, is one of those....
Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea

Recently I re-read “Wide Sargasso Sea”, the fascinating novel by Jean Rhys (first published in 1966 when the author was 76) which tells the “back story” of the mad wife in the attic in Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre”. Set...
The Tree of Man

The Tree of Man

After my first reading of The Tree of Man, by Patrick White, about twenty years ago, I put it back on my bookshelves uncertain whether or not I had enjoyed it. It was so rough-textured and densely written that it demanded more effort on my part than I was happy to...

The Novels of Richard Hughes

After close on forty years I have just re-read three novels by Richard Hughes: “A High Wind in Jamaica”, “The Fox In the Attic” and “The Wooden Shepherdess”. I can remember how much I enjoyed them in the 1970s but the stories...

Seven Pillars of Wisdom

One day, when I was a young teenager in the 1950s, my parents and I were introduced to a man who had met Lawrence of Arabia in Damascus in 1917. Lawrence had been wearing Arab dress, but his blue eyes had revealed his identity. T E Lawrence became one of the most...