I have an uncle who fancies himself as well-read – with some justification, I’ll admit. I studied English Language and Literature at a good university, and had to learn Anglo-Saxon to read the Anglo-Saxon chronicle in the original, but graduating without even opening Beowulf? That left him underwhelmed. Heaney’s translation, which won the Whitbread Book … More Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney
You might remember Matisse (and others) hitting the headlines in November with the discovery of a hoard of Nazi-confiscated artworks. At the time I was already reading this biography, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 2005. It was a difficult book to settle into and not because eight years and several … More Matisse the Master – A Life of Henri Matisse: Volume 2, 1909-1954 by Hilary Spurling
“I write less implicitly, more explicitly, if you understand the distinction, but not so well,” writes the main character Frances, an eighty-something novelist, on how her writing style has changed over the years. If Chalcot Crescent is anything to go by the same could be said of Weldon herself. The plot premise is vintage Weldon, … More Chalcot Crescent by Fay Weldon
whatcathyread 