Gillian Wales Reflects on Literary Values and Catherine Cookson
Gillian says: 'Catherine Cookson wrote 97 novels during her long lifetime – she was born in 1906 and died in 1998 at the age of 92. Although her books can be classed as ‘regional romances’ her...
View ArticleThe Must-Read Pile: Books have their Reasons
Since I was a child, as I wrote in The Romancer, I have obsessed about books, on shelves, in libraries, in bookshops. And like most readers and writers I gather books like a magpie and end up with a...
View ArticleReading William Trevor's READING TURGENEV
William Trevor is the master – probably the best in the last fifty years -of the short novel and the short story. He can give us a whole world in the compass of a short story or a short novel - as he...
View ArticleNorman Geras's Must-Read Pile
A Book for Every Step... WendyOne of the pleasures of wandering the web in the last few years has been the discovery of the Weblog of Norman Geras . I relish Norm's irony and perception as he...
View ArticleA Writer of Talent: Betty Miller (1)
Betty Miller I am now deep in the novel On The Side of the Angels by Betty Miller, originally published in 1945, On his Must Read list Norman Geras tells a story in praise of a novelist Betty Miller...
View ArticleBetty Miller On The Side of The Angels (2)
Isaiah Berlin: Betty was a pensive and melancholy girl…she also had a quality which I can only call moral charm…. Betty Miller, to a girl who asks her advice about becoming a writer: You should get...
View ArticleKindle, CreateSpace and Great People
Instead of celebrating Mother's Day I spent my weekend with some great people - Anne, Erica, Eileen, Judith, Martin,Joy, Geri (and Hilary and Mary in mind if not in body) - working alongside my...
View ArticleThe Magic of John Fowles
Books we love we read more than once or twiceIn 2009 I was asked by superweblogger Norman Geras to write a piece about a novel that had affected me. Recently Norman contributed a piece to this page (Go...
View ArticleBalzac (2), Courtesans and Anne Ousby
Caring or Controlling?Wendy La Cousine Bette is one of Honore de Balzac’s longest novels - first published in a series of pamphlets - and is considered one of his best. This novel was considered by...
View ArticleRevisiting Honesty's Daughter
Our Iconic Book Group met on Saturday to discuss very significant The Road by Cormac McCarthy - my views on this book and Dorothy's reader's commentary on this will be featured on this page next....
View ArticleThe Two Selves of Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
See also Lifeticetastedd‘…every woman needs ‘a room of her own’ — not simply to separate her from husband and children but also to separate her two selves...’ (1978) echoing Virginia Woolf at Smith...
View ArticleMore Betty Miller (3) : The lovely Sharon Griffiths on Farewell Leicester Square
After reading earlier posts here about the intriguing writer Betty Miller, my learned friend Sharon Griffiths - Columnist, Journalist, Novelist, - read Betty Miller’s Farewell Leicester Square and was...
View ArticleFrom Hamburg to Tantobie via Kindertransport.
Sylvia in her house in TantobieLast week, with my friends Gillian and Glynn Wales of The Writing Game I went to the small North Durham village of Tantobie to visit Sylvia Hurst nee Fleischer in her...
View ArticleCool VIENNA!
I spent some time in the eighties visiting friends in Vienna and working at The International School. I became interested in the role of this city in fiction. I recently gave a talk on this. I thought...
View ArticleJohn McGahern, Writing Retreats & Changing Lives
I first wrote this View of Writer John McGahern’s novel - Amongst Women as a guest writer for Kathleen Jones’ very special blog. We had read it in our Iconic Writing Group alongside Willian Trevor's...
View ArticleArticle 9
We had a fabulous response to Sunday's Writing Game Programme where Sylvia Hurst, aged 90, tells us how she arrived here on the Kindertransport from Germany - on one of the trains which rescued...
View ArticleExquisite Library; the mac in the chair is mine
Wonderful library; the mac on the chair is mine...Yesterday I went by train with my friend Gillian to the exquisite Carnegie reference library in Middlebrough, which on May 2nd celebrated the...
View ArticleDorothy M. hits THE ROAD
Dorothy, a valued and very informed member of our Iconic Book Group lives in Littletown near Durham City. Now retired she worked for Durham County Library Service for over 40 years and lists books...
View ArticleThe Rise and Rise of a Pitman Painter now on Kindle
The Rise and Rise of a Pitman PainterThe widespread international success of the Pitman Painter drama reminds me that my novel, originally called WHERE HOPE LIVES, now retitled GABRIEL PAINTING was...
View ArticleThe Charm of the Twentieth Century for The Historical Novlelist.
Recently while reviewing my novels for my Kindling project I have been reminded me of a talk I gave once at the Historical Novel Society called Twentieth Century Blues. What follows is in part, the...
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