Mainly books, but also other pleasing things
Posted in Biography, Books, Bookshops, Fiction, Friday Finds, History, Non-fiction, Weekly Events on Jul 9th, 2010
New-to-me books this week are Naming the Bones by Louise Welsh, and The Sisters who would be Queen by Leanda de Lisle. Louise Welsh is the author of The Cutting Room, a dark mystery, which I read several years ago and thought was good, if rather scary. Naming the Bones looks promising: Knee-deep in the [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, History, Non-fiction on Oct 29th, 2009
The Perfect Summer: Dancing into Shadow in 1911 by Juliet Nicolson is a fascinating look at life in Britain during the summer of George V’s Coronation year, 1911. When I finished reading this book I decided that the summer of 1911 was not “the perfect summer”. It was one of the hottest years of the twentieth century, [...]
Posted in Flodden Field, History, Northumberland, Places on Sep 15th, 2009
Whilst searching for a house D and I were near Flodden Field, so of course we just had to go and have a look at it. Flodden Field is near the village of Branxton in Northumberland, a peaceful setting now, but nearly five hundred years ago this was the site of the most famous battles in the [...]
Posted in Britain, History, Memoirs, Non-fiction, World War Two on Sep 3rd, 2009
… Neville Chamberlain broadcast that Britain was at war with Germany. In Wartime Britain 1939-1945 by Juliet Gardiner she quotes from the diary of a twenty-four year old civil servant living in Croydon on 3 September 1939: The sun is shining, the garden never looked lovelier – everything is in bloom. Tiger [the cat] lies there [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Crime Fiction, History, Non-fiction on Jul 12th, 2009
In my last Sunday Salon post I mentioned I was reading about the 1920s in A N Wilson’s After the Victorians. This week I’ve moved on to the 1930s – today’s chapter is called “Puzzles and Pastorals” and I enjoyed it immensely. I like word puzzles and most days do one or more Alphapuzzles, also [...]
Posted in Books, History, World War Two on Nov 16th, 2007
Sometimes I’m amazed at the links between the books I’m reading. I read the following books by choosing them individually without realising that they all had similar themes. Recently I read One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes, set in England in 1946 just after the Second World War had ended. Then I read Playing with [...]
Posted in History on May 13th, 2007
Danielle and Simon have recently posted photos of the views from their windows. As I’ve posted before the view from my window is shown at the top of the blog. It’s very wet now and the buttercups are starting to fade now, so the view is a bit different today. I’m not sure how old [...]
Monarchy has just arrived from Amazon and it looks as though I’ll have to start reading it straight away, even though I’m in the middle of several other books. Elizabeth, also by David Starkey is an absorbing account of Elizabeth’s early life, so it’ll be interesting to read about her in this book. I watched [...]
BooksPlease
Mainly books, but also other pleasing things
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