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
Filed under Book reviews …
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
Tales of Pirates and Blue Water (1922) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Book Review by George S: This 1922 volume contains stories written by Doyle over a long period, and the most striking are the four about the evil pirate Sharkey, set mostly in the Caribbean during the early eighteenth century. In the course of them, Doyle presents a potted history of the Caribbean. He depicts it … Continue reading
We Are Not Alone (1937) by James Hilton
Book review by George S: James Hilton wrote this novel after he had moved to Hollywood, and it reads rather like a movie treatment. We begin with opening shots of a cosy English cathedral town. A house is being demolished to make room for a department store, and people are reminiscing nostalgically: ‘That was where … Continue reading
Lolly Willowes (1926) by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Book review by Sue R: Sylvia Townsend Warner was a poet, short story writer, novelist and musicologist. She wrote non- fiction works including a biography of T.H. White, and a translation of Proust. She and her partner Valentine Ackland, a poet, were both active in the Communist Party; they worked for Red Cross during the … Continue reading
Le Bal (1930) and Snow in Autumn (1931), by Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky (1903-1942) was on my ‘to read’ list for a long time before our reading group’s decision to read European novels made me take down one of her books. This turned out to be both timely and chastening, as in the early years of the 20th century Némirovsky was a refugee, making her way … Continue reading
The Middle of the Road (1922) by Philip Gibbs
Book Review by George S: Philip Gibbs was a so-so novelist, but a very good reporter. The saving grace of this 1922 novel is that in the second half, the reporter becomes dominant. The novel is very much designed to explore the political issues of the day. Gibbs has been called a ‘newspaper novelist’, and … Continue reading
The Launching of Roger Brook (1947) by Dennis Wheatley
In the middle of the 20th century, Dennis Wheatley (1897-1977) was a prolific and popular author of thrillers, best known for writing about the occult. I came across his books, I think, through a holiday job in my local library. There were plenty on the shelves, in the lurid dustjackets his publishers seemed to favour. … 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
The Haunting of Toby Jugg (1948) by Dennis Wheatley
Book review by George S: The premise of this story is a gripping one: During the Second World War, Toby Jugg, a fighter-pilot, crashes and is paralysed from the waist down. He is being looked after in a country house in Wales, under the care of Helmut, a teacher from his old school. The book … Continue reading
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