Tag Archives: history

Worthless Men (reading-as-a-writer 10)

Posted on Aug 30, 2018 by

View this post on Instagram Why do I bother writing when the world already contains books like Worthless Men by Andrew Cowan (2013)? Set in an English market town in post-Somme 1916, the action spans no more than a couple … Continue reading →

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A Whole Life (reading-as-a-writer 8)

Posted on Aug 7, 2018 by

View this post on Instagram I really don’t want to write about A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler (trans. Charlotte Collins 2015). I’m afraid I won’t do justice to it – or that thinking too hard about this exquisite book … Continue reading →

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Why Journey’s End didn’t make me cry

Posted on Feb 8, 2018 by

The one thing I think I feared was that Journey’s End would be given the Blackadder treatment. Continue reading →

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Three books (soldiers’ diaries of the Great War)

Posted on Jan 27, 2018 by

Captain Charlie May is one of the kindest, funniest, most thoroughly decent men I have ever met, on or off the page. Continue reading →

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A garden by the sea

Posted on Jan 14, 2018 by

I visited Chygurno in May 2015. It’s a privately-owned garden – no tea shop, no toilets – just an honesty box in the porch and a homemade information board. I paid my money, read the history and wandered alone along … Continue reading →

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Three brilliant Great War blogs

Posted on Jan 6, 2018 by

Erudite, witty, and beautifully written, this blog never fails to fascinate and move in equal measure. Continue reading →

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The awful attraction of war

I’ve had this quote on a virtual sticky note on my MacBook for several months and I want to tidy it away. It’s taken from a piece in the London Review of Books several years back on Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy … Continue reading →

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Three books (that bring the early 20th century to life)

Posted on Jan 1, 2018 by

Unrequited love and political intrigue; resources which inspire or inform my writing. Continue reading →

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