Category Archives: Uncategorized

I recently stumbled on Jon Appleton’s website when I searched ‘second golden age of children’s books’. It’s a celebration not just of writers, illustrators and books, but of publishers, editors, reviewers and commentators as well. At the time, I was … Continue reading →

The garden was a drug and I was hooked. I needed money to finance the habit. I began to understand completely why debtors resort to uncharacteristic, extreme crimes… Every penny spent was more than we could afford, and the knowledge … Continue reading →

Warning: A big old whinge ahead, so if you’d rather not read it, skip to the next paragraph. The world is awful. The weather is awful. My back hurts, and I have a toothache and a root canal to look … Continue reading →

Deep under the surface, a seam of coal has been burning for who knows how long. The colonists gave the mountain the banal name it goes by on the map (Burning Mountain), but it was burning long before they saw … Continue reading →

When the idea of writing a “literary memoir” first sprang up (from whom? Memory shrugs, but it was someone in publishing) I replied to her or him or them: “That would be tedious. You’ve heard the bad joke about the … Continue reading →

Do I really need to read more popular psychology books? Apparently I do, because after seeing this interview in the Guardian, I went out and bought Being: Why It’s Harder to be Human than a Hamster or a Herring. Rachel … Continue reading →

…the uncommonly astute author Rachel Cusk tore away another veil for me in her essay ‘Making Home’, describing our houses as a loci of tension and considered design, simultaneously looked at and lived in. She examines our psychological compulsion to … Continue reading →

Charlie Porter begins this book in 1920, with Virginia Woolf writing to T.S. Eliot, confirming his invitation to stay at her home, Monk’s House, in rural Sussex. The letter concludes: ‘Please bring no clothes: we live in a state of … Continue reading →

Even though we have been visiting Adelaide for over 30 years to visit my husband’s folks, I’d never been to the State Library. The Museum, yes. The Art Gallery, yes. Last week, my husband took me to see the place … Continue reading →

The department’s ‘principal enemy’ was the United States, with Britain as a close second. …Department V…became known notoriously as the ‘wet affairs’ department for its proficiency in ‘liquidating’ targets. The Defector is the story of a KGB Department V agent, … Continue reading →