Frustratingly little is known about Jane Austen. We don’t know what she looked like. There is only one drawing of her, as a youth, that is considered to be a portrait, but even some scholars don’t accept that. In time for Jane Austen’s bicentennial year, Paula Byrne has put together a compilation of her life.…
THE GREATCOAT by Helen Dunmore
This book would have done better as a short story. It has the makings of a good yarn, but it draws things out much too long. If kept clean and simple, it would have been much more effective. In 1952, a young woman, newly married, takes up a worn, dingy apartment with her husband. He…
REVIEW: THE TOWER By Nigel Jones
Jones’ overview of the Tower of London’s thousand year history was no doubt a massive undertaking. Imagine it: ten centuries worth of sieges, celebrations, world-altering decisions, wrongful deaths and sovereign decrees all held within these walls, on just a few acres of land. Jones visits the (in)famous as well as the less well-known. Henry VIII’s…
REVIEW: BEAUTIFUL LIES by Clare Clark
Yes, the novel is as gorgeous as the cover. Ethereal, impactful*, vintage and evocative. The heroine, Maribel, is the vivacious wife of parliamentary representative Edward Campbell Lowe. Himself a boisterous, outspoken politician, the two make an unforgettable pair, if an unlikely one. Maribel employs her energies in photography, working to capture true images —…
READ-ALONG: THE PASSING BELLS by Phillip Rock
If you are as anxious for the series premiere of Downton Abbey as I am, then you know what it is to be captivated by good writing. Fill those dreary hours, waiting for the return of the Grantham household and the Dowager Countess’s quips by joining the Passing Bells trilogy read-along, hosted by bookclubgirl. And…