July 17, 2017 Introducing Jane Austen Week By Harriet Jane Austen died two hundred years ago, on 18 July 1817, at the age of just 41. She had anonymously published four…
October 16, 2016 How Sarah Waters Won Over the Reading World By Victoria Best The press release for Sarah Waters’ new novel, The Paying Guests, describes it as ‘the most anticipated book of 2014’ and for…
April 14, 2016 Remembering Anita By Thomas Otto Eighteen years ago, as an American with an inexplicable, but deep-seated Anglophilia, I picked up Anita Brookner’s novel A Friend from England (1987)…
June 11, 2015 Ruth Rendell (1930-2015) By Harriet Devine Ruth Rendell’s death on 2 May this year has brought to an end a career spanning an astonishing fifty years. By…
January 28, 2015 Biographical Notes: Frances Vernon Written by Harriet The life of Frances Vernon, whose six novels have just been reprinted by Faber Finds, makes for sad reading. Born, as…
October 6, 2014 Monique Roffey – A Profile By Victoria Best Monique Roffey has been on a creative roll for the best part of a decade and has seen her work rise…
July 15, 2014 Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) – A Biographical Note Written by Harriet Devine. She will love deeply – suffer terribly – she will have glorious moments to compensate. Emily Byrd Starr, Lucy Maud…
April 25, 2014 Celia Fremlin – A Life of Crime By Victoria Best Celia Fremlin published her first crime fiction, The Hours Before Dawn, in 1959, when she was 44 years old, and it was an…