I live in Hoylake, on the north-western tip of the Wirral peninsula. I spend an hour or more each weekday on trains and (ideally) spend the entire journey reading.
From age two up to my early teens we lived round the corner from Mr and Mrs J and their three lads, a family who were notorious in the area. Mrs J did not dress like the other mums, whose style choices tended towards vaguely shapeless dresses, comfy shoes and headscarves – this was the … More Milkman by Anna Burns
Biographies are like busses, you wait for one for ages then three come along at once… My Uncle Bobbie died earlier this year just under two weeks before his 96th birthday. It seems strange to refer to the death of a nonagenarian as a shock, but it was, because he wasn’t ill. On the morning … More Somewhere Towards The End by Diana Athill
When I was growing up, phrases such as ‘no-one likes a show-off’ and ‘pride comes before a fall’ were common family currency, ‘getting above yourself’ was a crime, and punishment by being ‘taken down a peg or two’ was swift and inevitable. In short, as a child I was taught not to place too high … More The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Mona Lisa Sunflowers The Scream Even if you know nothing much about art (like me) and you hear the name Leonardo de Vinci, Van Gogh, and Munch, then I bet you’ll immediately think of the paintings just listed. If you think a bit longer and harder, of course, you might come up with some others, … More A Life of Picasso Volume 1: 1881 – 1906 by John Richardson
Six years ago I visited the Bodies Revealed exhibition when it came to Liverpool. In case you haven’t heard of it, this is an exhibition of real human bodies that have been preserved using silicone rubber, a process known as plastination. The bodies are dissected and put in dynamic poses so you get the chance … More Flights by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Jennifer Croft)
St Andrew’s Gardens is a Grade II listed art deco building in Liverpool city centre. Now used for student accommodation, it was built in the 1930s as a council tenement block, and because of its distinctive circular shape became known locally as the “Bullring”. In the 1980s it was still in council ownership but badly … More Swing Hammer Swing! by Jeff Torrington
“A war between two people is not all that different from a war between two countries.” My paternal grandfather, William Smith, was killed in action in World War I. Not long afterwards his wife died of ‘grief’ (malnutrition and exhaustion, in my mother’s view) and their five children were put into homes run by Dr … More Theory of War by Joan Brady
My Dad was a big fan of Westerns. I grew up watching The High Chaparral and A Man Called Horse; by the time I was five I was hooked. I named a teddy bear Blue Boy (after the character Billy Blue Cannon in The High Chaparral) and wrote a letter to Santa promising to be … More Days Without End by Sebastian Barry
I’m lucky enough to be celebrating my 29th wedding anniversary on the beautiful island of Rhodes. Hubby and I rented a house for a week in Rhodes Old Town and we’re sitting in its private courtyard garden having just got back from swimming in the sea off Elli Beach. This has nothing to do with … More A Good Man In Africa by William Boyd
I’ve been meaning for ages to visit capital cities in Scandinavia and the Baltic States, and with Brexit looming I decided this summer was the perfect time to turn talk into action. So in June hubby and I set off on our own little travel adventure, taking in Copenhagen, Oslo, Bergen, Helsinki, Tallinn, Riga and … More Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
