Inspiring Older Readers
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At the Strangers’ Gate posted on 14 Sep 2020
Guest reviewer, Alun Severn reads New Yorker columnist Adam Gopnik's memoir of his early years in New York.
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A Passage to India posted on 13 Sep 2020
In 1912 Forster embarked on what would be a six month trip to India that was inspired by his unrequited romantic feelings for a young Indian man
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The Illustrated Man posted on 11 Sep 2020
Although Ray Bradbury is usually categorised as a writer of science fiction or maybe ‘speculative fiction’, I think that putting him a genre box...
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What is Life: understand biology in five steps posted on 07 Sep 2020
Back in the dim and distant past biology was one of my favourite subjects at school and I did pretty well in the ‘O’ level exam at the end of my time there
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Birds, Beasts and Relatives posted on 31 Aug 2020
This is the second book in what became Durrell’s Corfu trilogy.
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The Parrots posted on 28 Aug 2020
A satire about the corrupt and corrupting nature of literary prizes might seem a bit like shooting fish in a barrel...
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Spirits of the Season: the pleasure of well-chosen ghost stories posted on 24 Aug 2020
Guest writer, Alun Severn ignores the seasonal anomaly and sinks into an artfully selected collection of classic ghost stories.
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Candide, or The Optimist posted on 21 Aug 2020
François-Marie Arouet (1694 – 1778) took the pen-name Voltaire and became one of the leading commentators and satirists of his age.
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A Bite of the Apple: a life with books, writers and Virago posted on 18 Aug 2020
I can’t quite remember where exactly in the book it is but there’s a passage that says something to the effect that the Virago Classics ..
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Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars posted on 14 Aug 2020
I’ve always loved the Bloomsbury area of London because despite all modern day efforts to destroy its essentially Georgian elegance..