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The Yellow Birds- Kevin Powers
“The war tried to kill us in the spring. As grass greened the plains of Nineveh and the weather warmed, we patrolled the low-slung hills beyond the cities and towns. We moved over them and through the...
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‘Twas The Night Before Christmas
When I was small, reading A Visit from St Nicholas, more commonly known as, ‘Twas the night before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore was a Christmas Eve Tradition. I don’t normally post the full text...
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Ten Weeks in Africa by J.M. Shaw
Ten Weeks in Africa- What would you sacrifice to do the right thing? When Ed Caine, an NGO worker employed by the Global Justice Alliance moves his wife and young child to Africa to improve living...
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Look what I found in Waterstones…
On Saturday I went into Waterstones, Oxford and found myself in the middle of a Regency style musical performance. I was a little annoyed that the crowd which had formed around the performers meant...
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Magical Books Exhibition at Bodleian Library Oxford
My exhibition leaflet Yesterday afternoon I took a detour while shopping in Oxford to drop into The Bodleian Library’s exhibition of Magical Books. As with any Bodleian library exhibition, this did not...
View ArticleThe Book Thief Movie Trailer
Words cannot express how excited I am about seeing this trailer for The Book Thief movie… It’s giving me actual shivers of anticipation. Doesn’t it look amazing? And I don’t normally say that when I...
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Quote me on that… Sloeblack, Slow Black
Created using photograph by José Encarnação under terms of Creative Commons license I think that this opening to Under Milk Wood, written as a play for voices by my country man Dylan Thomas, is one of...
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The White Princess by Philippa Gregory
Philippa Gregory has some fairly outspoken critics, usually historians, who complain about the historical accuracy of her work. I’m not one of those, as I think her novels are usually very well...
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An Instance of The Fingerpost by Iain Pears
“God forbid that I should ever suffer the shame of publishing a book for money, or of having one of my family so demean themselves. How can one tell who might read it? No worthy book has ever been...
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The Book Thief Film Adaptation
Last night I went to see the film adaptation of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief and I loved it. Granted it took me about an hour to stop crying, but I really liked it and was impressed at how true to the...
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The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist is one of those widely acclaimed debut novels that seems to follow you around, even before you’ve read it you see the cover in bus stops, catch the title in magazines...
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The Phantom Tree by Nicola Cornick
I’ve always had a bit of a thing about the Tudor dynasty, and Catherine Parr as the surviving wife of Henry VIII always fascinated me, how do you follow up marrying one of the greatest tyrants in...
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The Five by Hallie Rubenhold
A lot has been written recently about the way in which serial killers are treated like macabre geniuses, while the victims of their crimes are forgotten. The most famous of these is undoubtedly Jack...
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Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
To some extent I’ve been putting off writing about Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. What do you say that the hype surrounding the book hasn’t already said? When if it hasn’t quite won every prize going,...
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