Who would have thought that the idea for a novel about mothers at the school gate would spark a frenzied bidding for world rights? Not a subject to make the heart race, surely, but race publishers did for a first novel by Gill Hornby, whose inspiration it was. Plainly she did her research at a
If you are one of that small band of people who happen to see days of the week, months of the year, even single numbers and letters in colour, you are considered either very peculiar or very lucky. It also means you are a synaesthete. I am one of them. Synaesthesia is a rare condition:
Recently, telling myself I must cure my allergy to the banal language employed by the Church of England these days, I went to a service in a local Norman church. The visiting preacher was a grey-haired woman. Her soporiferous sermon induced instant lethargy until she gave a sudden shriek. ‘…and God went WOW!’ she shouted,
Some issues are ‘life-dividers’ – no compromise will ever work Sheets and blankets: I have loved them always. The now ubiquitous duvet, current winner in the affections of sleepers, is to me the enemy. There is so much against it: its habit of preferring the other sleeper, and twisting over to his side. The draughts
A couple of years ago I was walking across a ploughed field when I was struck by such a searing pain in my left foot that I fell to the ground, moaning in harmony with the rooks above me. After half an hour of massaging my toes I was able to hobble the half-mile home.
We are so used to reading of malpractice in high places that I dare say our sense of outrage has become blunted. But when some devious act affects us personally, the sense is re-ignited. This is the story that shocked me — my grandmother, who died in the Sixties, had a great love of buying
Very occasionally one comes across a book which, in its unexpected delights, inspires one to leap about wild with praise, and rush out to buy copies for friends. This first work by William Newton, retired doctor, will surely have this effect on many readers. It is, simply, the story of remarkable teenage years in the
The title is a slight puzzle, a tease. But quickly all becomes clear. Here is a book of painful but fictional recollections recounted by fictional novelist Imogen Bailey, which in turn become a real novel of both power and delicacy. Imogen, a young woman of great sensibility, was traumatised by the loss of her beloved