Book review by Hilary Temple. The twenty-third title in the Barsetshire series, this novel requires Thirkell to start with some recapitulation. The first sentence contains a reference to Queen Elizabeth II who by this date has been on the throne for two years, enabling the author to describe the effects of the coronation in June … Continue reading
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Coronation Summer (1937) by Angela Thirkell
Book review by Hilary Temple. In this summer of celebrating the 70th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II it is interesting to read a celebration, quite untypical of her other work, by Angela Thirkell of the crowning of Queen Victoria but ingeniously published in the year of the coronation of King George VI. … Continue reading
Adventures of Bindle (1919) by Herbert Jenkins
Book review by Hilary Temple I had never come across Herbert Jenkins before I found this book on the shelves of my parents-in-law, who otherwise showed a marked predilection for Dornford Yates. The first edition proudly claims to have printed 40,000 copies, which sounds a very respectable number and followed the previous success of Bindle. … Continue reading
The Tenth Anniversary of Reading 1900-1950
Dear Reading 1900-1950 Blog followers, On the 19th July we are celebrating ten years of reading mainly popular fiction from the first half of the twentieth century by launching a book of reviews showcasing the work of the group. The reviews have mainly been specially written by current members of the reading group, though we … Continue reading
Steel City Readers: Reading for Pleasure in Sheffield 1925-1955 – a crowdfunding mission
Dear Reading 1900-1950 followers and contributors, This blog has now been running for a decade – since Erica Brown posted the first book review in July 2012. I will in July be posting a blog about what we are doing to celebrate a decade of reading and reviewing. However, our sister organisation Reading Sheffield is … Continue reading
Northbridge Rectory (1941) by Angela Thirkell
Book review by Hilary Temple At this stage in Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire saga we are in the second year of WWII. To emphasise this, the ten-bedroomed Rectory of the title is being lived in not only by the recently-arrived Rector and his wife, Gregory and Verena Villars, but by half a dozen of the Barsetshire … Continue reading
The Plebeian’s Progress, (1933) by Frank Tilsley
Book review by Chris Hopkins. This is a novel about the representative (though as we shall see not all reviewers were convinced about that) lives of Allen and Jane Barclay, starting in Manchester before the First World War, but then mainly set in the twenties and thirties. They both come from very poor circumstances, but … Continue reading
Before Lunch, (1939) by Angela Thirkell
Book Review by Hilary Temple Written in 1938 and unclouded by any rumours of war, this novel is surprisingly filmic compared with Thirkell’s previous and subsequent Barsetshire titles. In the opening chapter we watch an irritable middle-aged man looking out of his bedroom window. We are not told who he is until a horse-drawn farm … Continue reading
Adèle and Co., (1931), and Blind Corner (1927), by Dornford Yates
Book Review by Chris Hopkins Adèle and Co. is told in the first person by Boy, part of a close-knit group, made up of Daphne, his sister who is married to their cousin Berry Pleydell, Jonathan Mansel, whose sister Jill is married to Piers, the Duke of Padua, and Adele an American married to Boy. … Continue reading
Portrait of a Village (1937) by Francis Brett Young, with Woodcuts by Joan Hassall
Book Review by Chris Hopkins. Frances Brett Young in his ‘Author’s Note’ starts by referring to a novel he published three years earlier: Some years ago, when I published a book called This Little World, I was assured, by a multitude of correspondents, that they knew not only the village of which I had written … Continue reading
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