Books

Jamaica Inn/Daphne du Maurier

oAfter reading non-fiction it was a pleasure to return to a Daphne du Maurier novel I had not read. Jamaica Inn showcases Daphne du Maurer’s ability as a writer: she can tell a good story and conveys a fine sense of location and atmosphere. The story’s heroine is 23 year old Mary Yellan [...]

September 9, 2024 // 0 Comments

Joe Solomon and the Spirit of Mourant/Clem Seecharan

Port Mourant, a sugar plantation on the Corenyne Coast of Guyana, is a remarkable place as it has spawned 4 famous West Indian cricketers – Basil Butcher, Rohan Kanhai and Joe Solomon – and later Alvin Kallicharan, a political leader Cheggi Jagan and the author Professor Clem [...]

August 30, 2024 // 0 Comments

Worrell/Simon Lister

This biography serves as an illuminating follow up to Who Only Cricket Knows. Frank Worrell was the first black cricketer to captain the West Indies for a full series. A member of the three Ws triumvirate Caribbean; Clyde Walcott, who like Worrell went to Combermere school, and Everton Weekes [...]

August 10, 2024 // 0 Comments

Who Only Cricket Knows/David Woodhouse

This is a book prize-winning account of the 1953-1954 tour to the Caribbean led by Len Hutton and managed by Charles Palmer. The title is an adaptation from Rudyard Kipling by the Marxist writer C.R James which reflected one of the tensions of the tour – nascent Caribbean nationalism – [...]

July 31, 2024 // 0 Comments

Yellowface/Rebecca Kuang

This is an impressive novel recommended by Harriet Gilbert on A Good Read and presently Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime. The story is of an unsuccessful writer Juniper Hayward who is friendly at Yale with a far more successful one – Athena Liu. She meets up with her buddy in Washington DC who, [...]

July 19, 2024 // 0 Comments

Adult Book/Malcolm Knox

If i were to describe this novel in one word it would be scabrous. Malcolm Knox is a Sydney journalist and the novel is set in its North Shore. It features the Brand family. John is a doctor who died age 62 after becoming a porn addict. He has 3 sons by his ambitious wife Margaret: Davis, also [...]

July 17, 2024 // 0 Comments

Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes/David Kynaston and Harry Ricketts

This is the story of a classic Ashes series in 1961 in the context of two very different captains Peter May and Richie Benaud. Peter May (Charterhouse and Cambridge) was more patrician, a classical batsman but cold and distant from his men. Richie Benaud was an adventurous captain but also a [...]

July 8, 2024 // 0 Comments

All That Glitters/Orlando Whitfield

This is an account of the friendship between two art dealers – Orlando Whitfield and Inigo Philbrook – who met at Goldsmiths College. After an internship at the White Cube Gallery of mega-successful art dealer Jay Jopling, Inigo Philbrook made a fortune as a dealer in the secondary [...]

June 23, 2024 // 0 Comments

Beryl Cook

Many years ago I was at the National Theatre for a play I have long forgot. In the interval I went to their bookshop and came across THE WORKS by Beryl Cook. The cover alone reduced my theatre-going companion and myself to uncontrollable hysterics. Beryl Cook occupies a unique spot on art as she is [...]

May 15, 2024 // 0 Comments

Titanic lives/Richard Davenport-Hines

The Titanic sank 112 years and 1 month ago but it’s still an iconic event and I have often wondered why. It must be the sheer tragedy of the greatest liner of its age sinking on its maiden voyage and/or the film which launched the career of Kate Winslet and/or the horror of rich and poor [...]

May 11, 2024 // 0 Comments

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Cineworld

September 14, 2024 // 0 Comments

The heading above should have been Lee as I intended to see that film on its release date at the 5-00pm performance. However, on arrival at my local Cineworld, I was [...]
Sussex win in the cold

September 12, 2024 // 0 Comments

I went to Hove yesterday and left at midday as I could not take the icy wind. The championship has been book-ended with a chilly spring and autumn. Still, Sussex easily beat [...]
Tempus Fugit, as we always knew it did …

September 11, 2024 // 0 Comments

From time to time on this organ – or indeed sometimes (in real life) quite by chance, perhaps when either undertaking some trivial domestic task or reading a newspaper [...]
Jamaica Inn/Daphne du Maurier

September 9, 2024 // 0 Comments

oAfter reading non-fiction it was a pleasure to return to a Daphne du Maurier novel I had not read. Jamaica Inn showcases Daphne du Maurer’s ability as a writer: she can [...]
Saturday TV sport

September 8, 2024 // 0 Comments

My aspiration of a whole day as a couch potato sipping a Desperado lager was destroyed by the six-hour disappearance of our cat Maisie. As I was the last to see her when I [...]