Erica

LATEST ARTICLES ( 422 )

• All Things Betray Thee (1949) by Gwyn Thomas

  Book Review by Sylvia D. Gwyn Thomas (1913-1981)is one of Wales’s great literary figures. He was born in the Rhondda and won a scholarship to read Spanish at... Read more

  Posted on 09 July 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Cheerfulness Breaks In (1940) by Angela Thirkell

  Book review by Hilary Temple. (Published by Hamish Hamilton) Cheerfulness Breaks In might seem an odd title for a novel dealing with the outbreak of WWII. Read more

  Posted on 31 May 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) by James M. Cain

  Book Review by Sylvia D: The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) was James M. Cain’s first published novel. Cain (1882-1977) was initially a journalist and an... Read more

  Posted on 19 May 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Sally’s in the Alley by Norbert Davis (1943)

  

  Book Review by George S: Norbert Davis was an American author of detective fiction. I first heard of him when I was reading about Ludwig Wittgenstein’s taste... Read more

  Posted on 09 May 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• I Find Four People (1935) by Pamela Frankau

  Book Review by George S: This is Pamela Frankau’s autobiography, a version of her life so far, published in 1935, when she was twenty-seven. (I read a Penguin... Read more

  Posted on 09 May 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• New Walter Greenwood Site

  Dear Reading 1900-1950 colleagues, Having posted my review of Greenwood’s memoir There Was a Time (1967) – and thus broken every rule about this blog’s... Read more

  Posted on 31 March 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• There Was a Time (1967) by Walter Greenwood

  Book review by Chris Hopkins. Strictly speaking There Was a Time is a memoir and not a novel and so perhaps should not properly be reviewed here (and moreover i... Read more

  Posted on 30 March 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Love Among the Ruins (1948) by Angela Thirkell

  Book Review by George S: Love Among the Ruins is a depiction of upper-class and upper-middle class families in rural England a couple of years after the second... Read more

  Posted on 19 March 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• John Strachey, Digging for Mrs Miller (1941)

  This review on the Neglected Books site looks of interest for us: Read more

  Posted on 12 March 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1926) by Anita Loos

  

  Book Review by Chris Hopkins. I had to read Gentlemen Prefer Blondes because I started reading what I suspected was a parody of it, but couldn’t be sure... Read more

  Posted on 03 March 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Skylighters (1934) by J.B. Morton

  Book review by George S: Skylighters is a light comedy about a trio of swindlers who reckon they can make money by starting a new religion. It is by J.B. Read more

  Posted on 06 February 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• The Amazing Summer (1941) by Philip Gibbs

  Review by Sylvia D: Philip Gibbs’ The Amazing Summer (1941) is a good example of his journalistic novel-writing, set as it is against a backdrop of the hot and... Read more

  Posted on 25 January 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Second Review of Joy and Josephine by Monica Dickens (1948)

  Book Review by Jane V. The book opens with a kind of prologue. An Irish girl puts her crucifix in the folds of a newborn baby’s blanket and leaves the child in ... Read more

  Posted on 15 January 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• The Reckless Lady by Philip Gibbs (Published October 1924 by Hutchinson and Co)

  Book Review by Kath R. Philip Gibbs’ Wikipedia entry details his career as a war correspondent during the First World War and his reluctance to censor his... Read more

  Posted on 15 January 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• The Winding Lane (1931) by Philip Gibbs

  

  Philip Gibbs’s books have been described as ‘newsreel novels’. Typically they take a topic from the headlines and build a story round it. Read more

  Posted on 14 January 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood (1933)

  Walter Greenwood, Love on the Dole (1933) Book review by Chris Hopkins. Having now posted blogs about most of Walter Greenwood’s fiction, I realise that these... Read more

  Posted on 12 January 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Of Love and Hunger (1942) by Julian Maclaren-Ross

  

  This 1942 novel by J. Maclaren-Ross draws extensively on the author’s experience as a vacuum-cleaner salesman before the war. It is the story of Fanshawe, a... Read more

  Posted on 11 January 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• The Greater Trumps (1932) by Charles Williams. In Memory of Thecla – Reading...

  

  Book Review by Chris Hopkins. I remember reading Charles Williams’ novel The Place of the Lion (1931) at school in the 1970s, at the suggestion of my friend... Read more

  Posted on 06 January 2018 BOOKS, CULTURE

• The Trelooe Trilogy by Walter Greenwood [So Brief the Spring (1952), What...

  

  Book review posted by Chris Hopkins (the review is slightly longer than usual – it seemed best to review the whole trilogy in one post). Read more

  Posted on 28 December 2017 BOOKS, CULTURE

• The Secret Kingdom (1938) by Walter Greenwood

  

  Book review by Chris Hopkins. Walter Greenwood’s father was a hairdresser and by the time he married Elizabeth Matilda Walter he had opened his own hairdresser’... Read more

  Posted on 23 December 2017 BOOKS, CULTURE