A few years ago, finding a scrap of paper on which my father had written his mother’s maiden name, I resolved to find out what had happened to my father’s parents. Evenings would now be spent on genealogy sites searching online records. I requested copies of birth, marriage and death certificates from the GRO, military … More Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
So, he who is known only as “Hubby” is making a rare guest contribution to the What Cathy Read blog, but as ever, worry not, Cathy will be back next month. I went to an all-boys secondary school in the late 70’s and early 80’s. It was a time when corporal punishment was routinely used … More The Rotters’ Club by Jonathan Coe
Clocks in the UK jump forward by one hour at 1 am this Sunday (don’t forget!) as they do every spring, shifting us from Greenwich Mean Time into British Summer Time. With that in mind, it seemed a good time to read Mean Time by Carol Ann Duffy.I don’t read much poetry – and the … More Mean Time by Carol Ann Duffy
During my school years I was lucky enough to be taught by some brilliant English teachers, the kind who fostered a love of language and literature. There was Mr L in Year 5 who made a game out of memorising Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott (“From either side the river lie / Long fields of … More The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie
When I was growing up I lived with a ghost. I know some people will think that sounds crazy. I know some people will think I imagined it. Yet the experience was real. Our house-ghost wasn’t an apparition, it was a presence: being alone in a room, then knowing someone had entered although no-one was … More The Beginner’s Goodbye by Anne Tyler
At the time of writing, Prime Minister May is in France to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the D-Day landings. By the end of the week she will have resigned, after a relatively short premiership dominated by Brexit. At the D day ceremony a 90-something veteran tells a BBC reporter that it took so much … More Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Mosley
The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: The Merchant of Venice, Act 4 Scene 1 At the time of writing I’m not long back from Stratford-upon-Avon and a … More The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth
“A happy man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else.” Dorrigo Evans, age 77, is a surgeon, a war hero; a celebrity of sorts, made famous by a television documentary about his time as a POW in a Japanese camp on the Burma Death Railway, using his medical skills to save what … More The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
Should I stay or should I go now? If I go there will be trouble. An’ if I stay there will be double (from The Clash’s single Should I Stay or Should I Go?) The Inheritance of Loss won the Man Booker prize in 2006. It opens in the remote Himalayan town of Kalimpong, where a retired … More The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
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