On Writing ‘Three Strange Angels’
By Laura Kalpakian I often think of the novel, any novel, really, as a small boat, initially moored to a certain well known shore, an incident, say, the writer’s own…
By Laura Kalpakian I often think of the novel, any novel, really, as a small boat, initially moored to a certain well known shore, an incident, say, the writer’s own…
Interviewed by Harriet H: Cecilia, we learn from your website that you spent twenty years in marketing after leaving university. Did you always harbour the ambition to be a writer,…
Selected by Danielle Simpson The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim Any list of spring reading surely must begin with Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Enchanted April. It begins one dreary April day in…
By Jean Morris The right words will come to me, because I am now translating from the heart, not from the head.Maureen Freely One of my favourite reviewers remarked a…
Interview by Annabel A: Firstly, congratulations on A War of Flowers! It took the life and career of Clara Vine (Anglo-German film actress and British spy) to new and ever more thrilling…
Interview by Ingrid Wassenaar 1. Phillip, how did you come to essay writing? I came to essays through fiction. When I was starting out, I loved Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, or…
By Robert Davies The British Library is younger than you might think for such an august institution – it was only established with a split from the British Museum in…
I first came across Rex Whistler some years ago at Plas Newydd on Anglesey. There he had painted his largest and most famous mural, begun in 1936. The dining room…
Compiled by Annabel. 1. Born in 1908 in Manchester, the Graham family moved to Perranporth in Cornwall when Winston was seventeen. He stayed there until 1959, eventually settling in East…
Love them or loathe them, we’ve all been in one! The editors discuss the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to book groups. 1. What sort of…
In the second of our series where we interview new authors, Annabel talks to Frances Vick, author of Chinaski. A. When did you first realise you wanted to be an author…
An Interview with Notting Hill Editions Written by Victoria Best If you’ve ever seen a book by Notting Hill Editions, you’re not likely to forget it. Elegant hardbacks with embossed…
Written by Harriet The life of Frances Vernon, whose six novels have just been reprinted by Faber Finds, makes for sad reading. Born, as Georgina Frances Vernon, on 1 December…
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 her in our Five Fascinating Facts…
By Marilyn Dell Brady For the past three years, I have been reading globally and diversely, reading books written by people of color. The result has been exciting. By definition, people of…
My novel Fog Island Mountains is about a mixed-culture family living in southern Japan. The novel centers on the father’s unexpected diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and his wife’s flight from and denial…
Written by Diana Cheng By now, you probably have seen some of the movie adaptations listed in the previous BookBuzz, like Gone Girl, Unbroken, and The Imitation Game. Here, to kick off 2015, we…
Interview by Harriet H: Runaway is quite a different kind of book from your most recent novels, being both less dark (or perhaps dark in a different way) and not set on…
By Neil Ansell I am the author of two books of narrative non-fiction. Both are memoir, but are equally likely to find themselves shelved as nature writing or travel writing….
By Stefanie Hollmichel It has been a great year for space travel: the Philae Comet Lander, NASA’s test of its new Orion spacecraft, the ongoing discoveries of the Mars rover,…
Questions from Victoria 1. I found the two American cousins in The Widow’s Confession very evocative and enigmatic characters – what was your inspiration for their part of the story? It was…
Compiled by Harriet 1. Born in 1815, Trollope had a miserable childhood. His father lost all his money, he was bullied at school, and he contemplated suicide when he was…
Interview by Victoria Adèle Geras and I had an unexpected chance to bond before we ever met. We were both on our way to a café in a south Cambridgeshire village,…
By Emily Boyce During the festive season, Versailles sparkled with inevitability While translating Pascal Garnier’s novel The Islanders, set over several days in December in a snowy Versailles and described by…