Book review by George Simmers. This month we are looking at books and writers connected with Derbyshire and Yorkshire, and this novel, despite being written by the Hungarian, Baroness Orczy, qualifies on both counts. It is set on the moors of Derbyshire, and Baroness Orczy, having married her theatrical collaborator, Montagu Barstow, lived with him … Continue reading
Filed under Book reviews …
What Did It Mean? (1954) by Angela Thirkell
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
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
The Luck of the Bodkins (1935) by P.G. Wodehouse
Book Review by George Simmers: July was Herbert Jenkins month at the Sheffield Hallam 1900-1950 Reading Group, and so I gave myself a treat by reading a Wodehouse. Before 1918 P.G. Wodehouse had a variety of British publishers, but in 1918 Picadilly Jim was taken on by Herbert Jenkins, and Wodehouse liked the way that … Continue reading
Giant’s Bread by Mary Westmacott (1930)
Book review by George S: This is the first of the novels that Agatha Christie published under the name of Mary Westmacott. It is an odd book, though an interesting one. (Warning: The review contains spoilers.) It begins with a prologue, the opening night of a new opera, The Giant, by an unknown Russian composer. … Continue reading
Absent In the Spring (1944) by Mary Westmacott
Book Review by France Soar: When Agatha Christie, already renowned for her detective fiction, chose to write certain novels under the pen-name Mary Westmacott, she was presumably seeking to avoid any preconceptions on the part of her readers. By the time I came to read Absent in the Spring, in the spring of 2022, anonymity … 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
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
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
Reading 1900-1950 