by Valerie | Nov 27, 2019 | art, childhood, General interest, history, Italy, people, reading groups, theatre, travel, writing a novel
The loft – a child’s paradise. The place where parents put whatever they did not quite know what to do with but feared to throw away. Occasionally there is a sad moment when you silently watch bulging bin liners bumped down the stairs to a temporary store at the back...
by Valerie | Jun 12, 2019 | 1950s, art, book reviews, childhood, Fifties, General interest, history, Italy, people, poetry, reading groups, travel, writing a novel
Soon tennis will start at Wimbledon, rain permitting! The world-famous championships are about to begin in the prosperous, leafy suburb of London. It’s the season of long, languid summer evenings around the midsummer day on the 21 June, the longest day in the northern...
by Valerie | Jan 9, 2019 | art, childhood, General interest, history, people, reading groups, travel
These fragments I have stored against my ruins’ – T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland (near the end) Still clear in my memory is the sense of freedom I felt as an eight-year-old when, in a class spelling bee, I went to the top of the line for remembering ‘Mississippi’...
by Valerie | Jul 11, 2018 | book reviews, General interest, history, people, reading groups, travel
Not far away is Spurn Head, a wobbly tip of land that sticks out into the North Sea. Much of the land around it is below sea level and prone to flooding. The Greenwich meridian passes through it and whales swim around it. They sometimes are swept on to the beaches and...
by Valerie | Jan 18, 2018 | art, book reviews, General interest, history, people, reading groups
It’s only a coincidence but every year, in the depth of the sad, dark days, I celebrate my birthday, 29 December, as the day when at long last there are a couple more minutes of daylight, increasing daily from then onwards. The winter solstice in the...
by Valerie | Oct 11, 2017 | 1950s, childhood, Fifties, General interest, history, poetry, reading groups, travel
Twenty-five years after coming to studynot far away at York University and publishing her bestseller, the Wild Swan was back again, standing in the pulpit of Beverley Minster to promote the same book in the Beverley Literature Festival. A quarter of a century has...
Recent Comments