The Forgotten Smile by Margaret Kennedy
Reviewed by Simon Thomas The Ladies of Lyndon, Margaret Kennedy’s first novel, was published in 1923, while the one which followed in 1924 – The Constant Nymph – was an enormous bestseller,…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas The Ladies of Lyndon, Margaret Kennedy’s first novel, was published in 1923, while the one which followed in 1924 – The Constant Nymph – was an enormous bestseller,…
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 Victoria Best ‘My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.’ So begins this…
Reviewed by Rebecca Hussey The immediate effect of reading Peter Mendelsund’s What We See When We Read was to make me want to pick up a novel right away and start thinking…
Reviewed by Ann In many respects, How the Light Gets In, Louise Penny’s previous novel about Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, tied up a plethora of loose ends. Throughout the earlier books in…
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 Susan Osborne This is the first year that the Man Booker Prize has been opened up to include entries from the U.S.A. Out of a longlist of thirteen,…
Translated by Adriana Hunter Reviewed by Bookgazing. At the beginning of Under the Tripoli Sky, the book’s young narrator, Hadachinou, is subject to a bris; a ritual Jewish circumcision. The bris…
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 Kim Forrester Australian writer Christos Tsiolkas hit the big time with his best-selling novel The Slap in 2008. It won the ALS Gold Medal (2008), the Commonwealth Writers Prize Best…
Reviewed by Annabel Grayson Perry CBE RA, the Turner Prize-winning transvestite potter, is becoming a national treasure – so much so, that the BBC invited him to give their annual…
Reviewed by Edward Leigh This is the successor volume to The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, which together offer a complete history of how people…
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 Eric Karl Anderson Sometimes it seems like so such WWII fiction has been published that even stories set during the London Blitz all start to feel too familiar….
Reviewed by Victoria Best One of the reasons Ian Fleming wrote such good plots was because his time in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War meant that he lived…
Reviewed by Harriet I must admit I was initially drawn to this book by the lovely painting on the cover, a self-portrait by the great French artist Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Lebrun….
Reviewed by Eric Karl Anderson Catherine Hall has a skilful power for building a story around people hampered by emotionally turbulent pasts in her novels. She did this with beautiful…
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 remained friends with some members of…
Reviewed by Victoria Best I wonder if not being able to see ourselves is one of the great paradoxes of being alive – knowing oneself intimately and also not at…
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 Helen Parry Is it fair to claim that Marina Warner is the reigning British queen of fairy tales? I believe so. Her best-known book on the subject, From the…
Reviewed by Jodie Robson I think I may have have mentioned before that I’m a fan of Neil Gaiman’s writing. A pretty unabashed fan, actually, a bit like Hayley Campbell,…
SNB: By way of introduction would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself? Barbara: I was born and brought up in the east end of London. Back then, in…