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.
A few summers ago, Hubby and I took in the capitals of Scandinavia and the Baltic: Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn with their medieval old towns; scenic Helsinki; compact, cultured Oslo; and wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen. I’d had it in my head to go to Copenhagen ever since I was a kid growing up in the 1970’s … More Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
When I was in sixth form, studying for ‘A’ levels, my physics class had two teachers. Let’s call them Mrs M and Miss C. Neither seemed to know how to teach and they each had a technique for dealing with questions from the class. Mrs M, who never moved off her lab-stool, not even when … More The Destiny Waltz by Gerda Charles
When I was a teenager studying for my ‘A’-levels, one of the English Literature set-texts was Waiting for Godot, and I struggled to understand it; particularly the relationship between Pozzo and Lucky. In case you’re not familiar with Beckett’s play, when they first appear Lucky has a rope around his neck, which Pozzo uses to … More The Bird of Night by Susan Hill
If you read my last blog you might remember I suggested the literary tourists among you might consider visiting the Mauritshuis art museum, The Hague, to check out Carel Fabritius’s The Goldfinch and Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, paintings which inspired novels by Donna Tartt and Tracey Chevalier respectively. I have succumbed to … More Footnotes – A Journey Round Britain in the Company of Great Writers by Peter Fiennes
One of the few benefits of living in Covid-19 induced lock-down is that at 5:30 pm each weekday, instead of heading to some homogenous business hotel or crossing the country east to west along the M62 (the only motorway in the UK with a “summit” sign, at 1221 feet above sea level, the highest point … More The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
My friend, A, used to devour books by Maeve Binchy. I’m not really an easy reading kind of a girl, as you might have gathered from reading this blog, but I also refuse to turn into a book snob so when A insisted I read Binchy’s Evening Class, I agreed to borrow her dog-eared copy. … More Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
In March, Hubby and I went away for a week’s skiing holiday with friends, as we normally do. We went to Tignes, France, which links with Val D’Isere to form the large Espace Killy ski area. It was a good week: skiing, eating, drinking, pub quiz (we won), swimming/relaxing in a pool and spa, the … More The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Hubby and I spent a week in France last summer to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. 30 years! Where did they go? When you’ve no kids, you live in a Peter Pan-like bubble where you never seem to get any older and time doesn’t seem to pass until…bam! A significant anniversary hits and it’s hard … More Every Man For Himself by Beryl Bainbridge
My Uncle Bobbie died just over a year ago. I’ve spent some time recently sorting through his old 78” records. He had a lovely singing voice in his day and for many years was a compere and singer at his local parish club. Unsurprisingly his old records reflect the music he most liked to sing: … More The Accidental by Ali Smith
Last summer I was in a bar in Corfu watching Liverpool beat Spurs 2-0 in the Champions League Cup Final. The previous summer I’d watched Liverpool lose the same final to Real Madrid by 3-1. In that match we were disadvantaged not only because our star striker, Mo Salah, broke his collarbone within the first … More The Reservoir Tapes by Jon McGregor
