Where Ink Meets Imagination: Victor Hugo and the Synergy of Art and Writing Visiting the Royal Academy’s exhibition of Victor Hugo’s drawings and watercolours felt like stepping into the subconscious of a writer who saw no boundary between the visual and the verbal. Best known for his towering literary achievements, Hugo was also a visionary […]
featuring American Locomotive (1944) by Edward Hoppper a short story by Curator Sara McKee FRSA The train hums beneath me, a steady rhythm that has become as familiar as my own heartbeat. Every morning, I take the same seat by the window, watching the city blur past in muted greys and browns. And every morning, […]
A short story created to envision an art emporium, now a reality with the opening of Celf Palas. Many years ago, I had a dream of curating art exhibitions and having my own gallery. I took the plunge in 2018 with an online blog which grew into Life: Full Colour our yellow art gallery. Always […]
Book Review by Sara McKee A whole new perspective on Doctor Zhivago “You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together to see if we know what we were taught.” Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak My experience of Doctor Zhivago was primarily watching the […]
REVIEW BY IAN JAMES BRYDON The eleventh volume of Anthony Powell’s masterful Dance to the Music of Time sequence opens in Venice where the narrator, Nick Jenkins, has been lured to attend a literary conference. Among his fellow delegates are the erudite but rather intimidating academic, Dr Emily Brightman, and Russell Gwinnett, an American professor […]
REVIEW BY IAN JAMES BRYDON Like her previous book, Bluebird, Bluebird¸ this novel is set in East Texas and features Texas Ranger, Darren Matthews. Until I read the previous book, I hadn’t been aware that the Texas Rangers still existed, and had assumed that they had passed into legend during the period of the wild […]
The second volume of Powell’s epic roman fleuve opens with the narrator, Nick Jenkins, presumably in middle age or beyond, looking through the wares on offer at a downmarket auction and recognising four paintings by E Bosworth Deacon. This prompts Jenkins to recollect his earliest encounter with Mr Deacon, who had been a friend of […]
I read a few critical reviews of this debut novel by Caoilinn Hughes and decided to give it a whirl. Described as “Kick-Ass and Whip-Smart”, “Dazzling, Heady Fiction”, “Urgent, Funny, Painstaking”. In fact the publisher’s own blurb followed with similar hyperbole: “Written in electric, heart-stopping prose, Orchid and The Wasp is a dazzlingly original novel […]
Chris Pavone’s previous novels (Expats, The Accident and Travellers) were notable for their highly complex plots, and this new one is true to form. All the action (and there is a lot of action) is encompassed within a span of twelve hours, and moves the reader back and forth across central Paris (with occasional scenes […]
This is the third instalment in Mick Herron’s series featuring the inimitable Jackson Lamb and his team of ‘slow horses’. Lamb himself is an extraordinary creation, reminiscent of Reginald Hill’s burly and crass Superintendent Andy Dalziel, only far more dishevelled and boorish. His ‘slow horses’ are cast-offs from the elite world of MI5, each having […]
