With her head tucked underneath her arm She walks the Bloody Tower With her head tucked underneath her arm With her head tucked underneath her arm [From With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm by Sammy Gay (1934)] It would normally be pantomime season (oh yes it would) so it seems kind of fitting to … More The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel
Before you rush to hit the “unsubscribe” button, this is very much a one-off. If you are a regular reader of What Cathy Read, I get a mention now and again as “Hubby”, and come across as basically a man of simple tastes, who is most at ease when hitting something with something else, or … More Love Is Blind by William Boyd
I was nineteen when I first came across the story of Patient Griselda, within the Clerk’s Tale in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. For those who don’t know the story, Griselda’s husband sets out to test her obedience, first by removing their two children at birth, supposedly to have them killed, then by throwing her out … More Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi (translated by Marilyn Booth)
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
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
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