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A la Colthard/Tea at the Grand Brighton

In all the years I have been reviewing for The Rust I have never covered afternoon tea though it is now a popular though not inexpensive experience: Bob Tickler’s charming P/A Polly once paid £200 for tea at a high end London hotel. This may be as hotels are still recovering financially from [...]

November 1, 2024 // 0 Comments

Gabriel’s Moon/William Boyd

A newly published William Boyd novel is a big literary event especially for his legion of followers. The general critical view is his recent novels fall short of his earliest West African  ones and Any Human Heart. He is a master story teller and Gabriel’s Moon conforms to that. There are [...]

October 9, 2024 // 0 Comments

Fiorentina File: Fiorentina 2 New Saints 0/Conference League

I had never heard of the Welsh side New Saints. I had to google them to discover they have won the Cymru  Premiership League 16 times.  They are based in Oswestry, Shropshire, and must be the first Welsh team to visit the Artemio Franch. I was anticipating an easy victory but it was anything but. [...]

October 4, 2024 // 0 Comments

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

Farleys Farm House (second visit)

Last Friday I arranged to take two friends, D & His wife L, – whose main home is Petworth – to Farleys, the home of surrealist painter Roland Penrose who founded the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Lee Miller, sometime Vogue cover model, international photographer and innovative [...]

June 16, 2024 // 0 Comments

On the trials and tribulations of modern life

Yesterday at about 3.00pm in the warm mid-afternoon sunshine – after a relatively sedentary day to that point – my “other half” and I decided to go walking at a local coastal area of protected wildlife and other things. As we arrived we were seeking nothing more than a quiet, reflective, [...]

May 17, 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

A Saturday afternoon watching rugby

Over several years now this organ has covered the Northern Hemisphere version of the sport of rugby union in some depth, covering everything from specific matches and trends in the financial fortunes and playing tactics of elite professional clubs to its ongoing inherent dangers and medical issues. [...]

April 28, 2024 // 0 Comments

More Daphne du Maurier/Radio 4 drama

The second Daphne du Maurier dramatisation by Paula O’Shea on Radio 4 (broadcast yesterday) was not an adaptation of one of her stories but rather a chance meeting late in Daphne’s life on one of her coastal Cornwall walks between her – played excellently by Helena Bonham Carter – [...]

March 7, 2024 // 0 Comments

Frances McDormand

I read Olive Kitteridge and saw the HBO series after Melanie’s recommendation of both. The series did indeed highlight what a great actress Frances McDormand is. She rose to fame as the detective in Fargo, a typically unglamorous rôle, in which she is mainly in a bulky anorak to keep herself [...]

November 4, 2023 // 0 Comments

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