No, not the one you’re thinking of, much as I love my Stoppard: I mean in fact W. S. Gilbert’s play: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern A Tragic Episode, in Three Tabloids, founded on an Old Danish Legend I just started reading McCrum’s giant doorstop biography of P. G. Wodehouse, who of course adored Gilbert and at…
Category: Friday’s Forgotten Books
Friday’s Forgotten Books: Mad World
MAD WORLD Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead Paula Byrne Harper 2009 (though my Sunday Times edition gives the date as ‘2099’) One of the things that interested me in this book was Byrne’s declaration that the heyday of the “heavily footnoted biographical doorstopper” was over and the ‘selective’ approach should be recognised. She…
FFB: Ritual by David Pinner
David Pinner’s novel Ritual is probably best known for inspiring the classic film The Wicker Man, which counts as horror or comedy depending on your religious alliances (or maybe a little of both — those poor animals!). Having come up in conversation on Twitter (I think? Rod McKie I believe can refresh my memory), I…
FFB: Our Man in Havana
Graham Greene seems to stay in the mind of a good number of people, but he seems to have fallen off the popular radar for sure. I am somewhat abashed to admit that it was only recently that I finally picked up Our Man in Havana on a whim at the library (my usual brainstorming…
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Lady Killer
LADY KILLER by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding Synopsis via Aunt Agatha’s: Holding’s forte was the psychological suspense novel, and like our time’s Minette Walters and Ruth Rendell, she combines relentlessly deepening suspense with deep insight into character and trenchant social criticism. Her method was usually to focus on one character, writing in the third person but…
Friday’s Forgotten Books: Lyrics and A Hard Road to Nowhere
A bit of a cheat: a music two-fer. One is old, but the other’s new; nonetheless, given the difficulty of finding your audience in the ocean of new publications out there, it deserves a boost to the signal. The Fall: Lyrics by Mark E. Smith The lynchpin of my current writing career: what, you think…
Friday’s Forgotten Books: Jean Craighead George
I was saddened to hear of the death of Jean Craighead George yesterday. I think Liz Hand first published a link on Facebook, but loads of others shared the news with the same feeling of loss for her absence and joy for her vivid adventures of the outdoors. One of my former students said she…
Friday’s Forgotten Books: Complete Nonsense
Tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of Edward Lear’s birth. There’s a terrific blog that keeps track of all the events and and another that prints pages from Lear’s diary. In a wonderful piece in the Independent David Quantick wrote winningly about Lear and the appeal of nonsense. I have to say, I was convinced before…
Friday’s Forgotten Books: Many Happy Returns
I am doing my taxes today which leaves little time for writing at present. I am somewhat abashed to find I spent over $6300 on travel last year. As luxuries go, that’s one of the best. I have Many Happy Returns: An Unofficial Guide to Your Income Tax Problems by Groucho Marx. I believe my…
Friday’s Forgotten Books: The Life of Christina of Markyate
I don’t think there’s much chance of overlap with this week’s choice. The life of a twelfth century recluse: it doesn’t scream popular appeal, I suppose. But it should! A fascinating story and an early biography of a woman in a time when few but kings and saints got their stories told (fortunately at least…