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Margaret Drabble rss

Olivia Manning in 1955

Her fighting soul

12 January 2013
Olivia Manning: A Woman at War Deirdre David

OUP, pp.405, £25, ISBN: 9780199609185

The subtitle of Deirdre David’s life of Olivia Manning, ‘A Woman at War’, has a resonant double meaning. She was, as we are repeatedly informed, a unique example of a… Read more

The usual suspects

5 May 2012
An Academic Question Barbara Pym

Virago, pp.19, 8.99

It is disconcerting to discover that a novelist a generation older than oneself has been trying to write ‘a sort of Margaret Drabble effort’, even if the book ‘hadn’t turned… Read more

Mysteries and hauntings

18 December 2010
While the Women are Sleeping Javier Marias

Chatto, pp.129, 10

Javier Marias’s elegant new volume is a collection of ghost stories, but its alluring dust jacket, illustrating the first tale, shows us a sunny midsummer image of a woman in… Read more

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Absurdly grandiose – and splendid

9 October 2010
The Lost City of Stoke-on-Trent Matthew Rice, with a foreword by Emma Bridgewater

Frances Lincoln, pp.19.99, 152

The Potteries are one of the strangest regions in the British Isles, and Matthew Rice’s The Lost City of Stoke-on-Trent celebrates their extraordinary oddity. The Potteries are one of the… Read more