This is the End by Stella Benson
Reviewed by Simon Thomas One of the more unusual novelists being reprinted at the moment is Stella Benson. Her work is issued by Michael Walmer, a one-man publishing house that…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas One of the more unusual novelists being reprinted at the moment is Stella Benson. Her work is issued by Michael Walmer, a one-man publishing house that…
Reviewed by Simon If you’ve ever wondered what sort of prose Catherine Morland might have read before she ventured to Northanger Abbey, then look no further than Horace Walpole’s The Castle of…
Reviewed by Jane Carter My mother, when she was a very small girl, was given a beautiful copy of The Happy Prince and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde. She loved that book,…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine There is one characteristic which may be safely said to belong to nearly all happily married couples – that of desiring to see equally happy marriages…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas I am an enormous fan of Slightly Foxed Editions, which are reprints of memoirs published in beautiful little hardbacks, complete with their own bookmark-ribbons. Obviously the…
Reviewed by Karen Langley In his time, E.F. Benson was a prolific writer of many different types of fiction, but nowadays he is best remember for his much-loved stories about…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas It’s fun occasionally to read a book that doesn’t take itself remotely seriously. And it would be impossible for Love Insurance (1914) by Earl Derr Biggers to take…
Reviewed by Jenny. Mary Renault has a genius for the past. It’s in all her historical books: the stony, fated world of the Greeks, rushed forward to our softer and…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. So, famously, wrote LP Hartley at the beginning of his most famous novel, The Go Between. But what…
Translated by David Carter Review by Annabel Gaskell While Desperate Games is not a great work of literature, it is a book that is BIG on ideas. This philosophical satire on science,…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas One of the more niche tastes I have, when it comes to books, is for fake etiquette guides (for which I am sure there is a…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine “A lace handkerchief without even a monogram on it and a bloodstained knife without fingerprints or marks of any kind”, McCarthy said. “There’s nothing whatever in…
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long Over the last ten years or so I have tracked down and read all of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s adult writing. I had been totally unaware that…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell 2014 marks the centenary of the birth of Robert Aickman, an author who once encountered demands that you read more of his output – particularly his…
Translated by Soren A. Gauger and Guy Torr Reviewed by Karen Langley The boundaries and allegiances in Europe moved and blurred continually during the early 20th century, and many writers…
Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is a famous and fascinating book, and I think anyone interested in the Great War, or the wider question of how wars begin, would find…
Reviewed by Rachel Fenn Wilfred and Eileen, one of Persephone’s new books for the Spring, is also one of their most modern, having been first published in the 1970s. It…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Mavis Doriel Hay (1894-1979) wrote only three crime novels, all published in the 1930s. They slipped completely under the radar until the British Library decided to…
Reviewed by Lizzy Siddal Let me start this article with a confession. In my pre-blog years, I once read a Maigret novel. I didn’t like it much. I found it…
Reviewed by Jodie Robson “It was a glorious day in June – for that matter it was the Glorious First of June – and the sun was resounding on the…
Reviewed by Danielle Simpson Quite often the best reading experiences I have, or at least the most memorable ones, are stories that are in some way challenging or difficult. This…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine No author of the present day has been at once so much read, so much admired and so much abused. So wrote the New Monthly Review…
Translated by Helen Constantine Reviewed by Harriet Devine In issue 1 of SNB, I reviewed Zola’s Money, and Victoria wrote a fascinating article about his “racy, sordid books” for the BookBuzz section. Money was the…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas My heart would normally sink at any blurb which began ‘The year is 2151.’ I am perfectly willing to concede that the fault is with me…