This isn’t a thriller. Or a melodrama. Nor does it quite pack the punch of Michael Morpurgo’s Private Peaceful , which it resembles a little in its story of a (way of) life broken up by World War 1. It’s a description of a young girl , and how she and the world around her …
The First World War in 100 Objects
Not so much a history as a series of snapshots, a book you can read in any order you want, and which is packed with fascinating – sometimes completely unexpected – information. The trenches and tanks and gas attacks were nothing new. But ration cards, the Zimmerman telegram and the use of carrier pigeons – …
Howards End Is On The Landing
It wasn’t the title that grabbed me so much as the sub-title: A Year of Reading from Home. (I love hearing, and reading, about what people like to read.) Ten years or so ago, Susan Hill went looking for a book, couldn’t find it, but discovered several that she’d never read. So she decided to …
God Is Not Great
I’d never read anything by Christopher Hitchens before, mainly because somebody had once written that he was the basis for the drunken journalist in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities,and that character was more than a little off-putting. Well, culpa mea. Because he can really write. Expecting a somewhat heavy read, I went through this …
