Book review by George Simmers: Minesweepers were among the less glamorous naval vessels during the Second World War, but the work they did was vital. Ewart Brookes’s novel is closely based on his own experience commanding a minesweeper patrol ship. His hero, Lieutenant William Haley, RNVR, is at first disappointed to be transferred from a … Continue reading
Filed under Book reviews …
We (1924) by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Book review by Alice C: ‘You look in bad shape. You look as if you’re developing a soul’. I read this dystopian novel in The Second Lockdown. On page 12 we’re told of the Table of Hours, where one’s life, one’s comings and goings, are mapped out in a familiar and comforting timetable and of … Continue reading
Humbug (1921) by E.M. Delafield
Book Review by G.S.: Humbug is a very good novel, yet another reminder that there is more to E.M. Delafield than the Provincial Lady ( excellent as that is). Like many of her novels of the early twenties, it is an impassioned plea for honesty. It begins with the splendid sentence: Good women know by … 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
Blood Royal (1929) by Dornford Yates
Book review by George Simmers: This is the third of Dornford Yates’s ‘Chandos’ novels, and the first not to feature Jonah Mansel. Mansel had followed the Bulldog Drummond pattern for a twenties action hero – he was an ex-soldier sorting out peacetime problems by bringing into play the attitudes and skills learned in war. In … Continue reading
The Phantom of the Opera (1910) by Gaston Leroux
Book Review by Jane V. I wanted to source an early title for the session on books produced by Mills & Boon publishers at the beginning of their existence. After much ado trying to find a title which I could verify was actually published first by M & B and which was not exorbitantly expensive, … 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
Women Who Seek (1928) by Denise Robins
Book review by George S. This month at the Popular Fiction reading group we have been exploring the steamy world of Romance, by looking at early Mills and Boon novels. I read a book by one of the publishing house’s most successful writers – Denise Robins. Women Who Seek is an odd title for this … Continue reading
WAAF into Wife (1943) by Barbara Stanton
Book Review by Chris Hopkins. I was very pleased to discover this Mills & Boon novel about five years ago when I first started to explore fiction about British Servicewomen in the Second World War. I have just finished it for the second time and have to confess that I enjoyed it at both readings. … Continue reading
