I just found this book on my shelf after many years and was enchanted all over again by the sweetness of the cover. The illustrator is Margery Gill. The back cover is no less delightful. I received this book for Christmas when I was ten. I remember choosing it with the woman who gave it […]Read Post ›
What a great mystery – you get two books for the price of one, and though the parallels are (not so) subtly spelt out for you, there is more than enough whodunnitness to keep you interested. Anthony Horowitz writes the way I would like to write- wittily, observantly, intelligently. He’s clever and fun, and is […]Read Post ›
I wonder who remembers this face. If any of his family ever come across it then please get in touch. David’s birthday was on 15th March. He used to joke about the portents and then one day his worst fear was realised and he sadly died in May 1990, a very few weeks after being […]Read Post ›
George Sand has always been a very romantic figure in my imagination. Ever since I was at my boarding school in Ealing, when Mother Mary Dominic swore me to secrecy not to let the other nuns know that I knew, she divulged that Chopin’s lover, that very wicked woman, had actually been a pupil at […]Read Post ›
21.01.2020 Last week was one of the most frustrating weeks that I have ever had. It was also one of the best because I caught up with some people I hadn’t seen in a long time. On Monday I was persuaded to eat a custard and fruit cake when I went for coffee with two […]Read Post ›
This is the book I would like to have written. ST and I have so much in common. Not everyhing of course. She is much, much cleverer than me and much more knowledgeable – and much wittier, to boot. But – we both like buses, and talking to strangers, and looking out of the window, […]Read Post ›
For JR Marguerite was the Diana to my Anne of Green Gables – many were the glasses of “raspberry cordial” that we shared, many potatoes peeled and eaten, many world problems discussed and solved, many evenings spent together, many days out, and in; generally, someone I relied on to be there when I needed her […]Read Post ›
Do you recognise these words? Aqua Laureth sulphate.? Limanol? Are you a chemist? If not, then you are indeed a reader. Reading the back of the shampoo and conditioner bottles, for lack of any other reading matter, or the label on the marmalade jar has always made my family think I am quite eccentric – […]Read Post ›
Life Through Basia's Eyes 