October 7, 2021 Five fascinating facts about fictional asylums By Anne Goodwin In my professional life as a clinical psychologist, I visited around a dozen of the hundred or so long-stay psychiatric hospitals…
June 16, 2021 Five Fascinating Facts About… Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf Compiled by Annabel The Royal Society of Literature is celebrating ‘Dalloway Day‘ today – a Wednesday in the middle of June – when Virginia…
May 14, 2019 Five Fascinating Facts About… Daphne du Maurier Compiled by Annabel Ali at her blog, Heavenali, is hosting Daphne du Maurier reading week from May 13-19, so we’re joining in. One: Jamaica Inn, the…
August 3, 2017 Five Fascinating Facts about… Anthony Burgess Compiled by Annabel Researching Burgess for this article, I found so many nuggets, I could easily have compiled a list of fifty facts –…
May 11, 2017 Five Fascinating Facts about… Arnold Bennett Compiled by Julie Barham 1.Bennett was an ardent Francophile, frequently looking to France as a source of literary inspiration. He would moor his yacht…
July 14, 2016 Five Fascinating Facts About… A.A. Milne Written by Simon Thomas 1.) A.A. Milne had a famous schoolteacher. A.A. Milne’s father John ran a small boys’ school, Henley House, and one of…
April 5, 2016 Five Fascinating Facts about… Vita Sackville-West Compiled by Simon Vita Sackville-West is probably best remembered today as the inamorata of Virginia Woolf or the garden designer behind Sissinghurst. Less remembered, on…
October 23, 2015 Five Fascinating Facts about… Richmal Crompton Written by Simon The author of the much loved William books, about a well-meaning but disastrous young boy, also wrote over thirty books for…
October 22, 2015 Five Fascinating Facts about … Margaret Atwood By Shoshi Ish-Horowicz 1. She had an unconventional childhood with her family, spending every spring and summer in the northern Canadian wilderness; Atwood didn’t…
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…
April 23, 2015 Five Fascinating Facts About… Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Compiled by the Shiny editors. We join in the celebrations of the 150th Anniversary of the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with our own little…
April 2, 2015 Five Fascinating Facts About… Winston Graham Compiled by Annabel. 1. Born in 1908 in Manchester, the Graham family moved to Perranporth in Cornwall when Winston was seventeen. He stayed there…
January 27, 2015 Five Fascinating Facts About… Virginia Woolf Written by Simon Thomas We’re featuring a few Virginia Woolf titles in this issue, so it seemed a good time to turn attention to…
January 13, 2015 Five Fascinating Facts About… Anthony Trollope Compiled by Harriet 1. Born in 1815, Trollope had a miserable childhood. His father lost all his money, he was bullied at school, and…
October 21, 2014 Five Fascinating Facts about… E.F. Benson By Guy Fraser-Sampson. 1. His father was Archbishop of Canterbury. Through this connection Benson gained privileged access to high society, including royalty and the aristocracy. He…
October 9, 2014 Five Fascinating Facts about… Frances Hodgson Burnett Compiled by Harriet Devine 1. Frances was born near Manchester, in England. Her father was a successful ironmonger, but her family fell on hard…
July 28, 2014 Five Fascinating Facts About… Robert Aickman Winkled out by Annabel Gaskell 1. Although we’ve come to know Aickman as an author, he was a prominent conservationist. In 1946, he was…
July 9, 2014 Five Fascinating Facts About… Alexander Pushkin Written by Karen Langley 1. His matrilineal great grandfather was a Black African Page brought over to Russia as a slave. Abram Petrovich Gannibal (1696–1781)…
April 24, 2014 Five Fascinating Facts about Rumer Godden Compiled by Victoria Best As an accompaniment to Harriet’s review of Rumer Godden novels An Episode of Sparrows and The Dark Horse, here are five things you might…
April 17, 2014 Five Fascinating Facts about… Nathanael West Compiled by Oliver Tearle To accompany our review of Daunt Books’ new reprint of Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, reviewed here, we’ve asked Oliver Tearle to…
