• Books

    Five Wonderful Moments From ‘A Bear Called Paddington’

    March 16, 2025 - By 

    The short, simple nature of children’s books make them the perfect material if you’re looking for a break between more arduous reads. I’ve picked up the habit of reading a short, classic kids book between novels ever since I started reading Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit series. However, before delving into any children’s fiction, I’m always a little wary of finding them too childish to enjoy as an adult. I was therefore pleasantly surprised by A Bear Called Paddington, as I had gone in expecting little more than a picture book, but instead received something more substantial. The language used by…

  • Books

    My Favourite Books Imagined as Pre-Raphaelite Paintings

    February 28, 2025 - By 

    Sadly, I cannot be considered an ‘art expert’ in any capacity, but luckily for my ego, Taschen’s ‘Basic Art’ series allows me to pretend I am. These slim books which act as crash courses in key artistic movements have equipped me with just enough knowledge to delude myself, quite happily, into thinking I have the art knowledge of a Tate curator. I’ve just finished Taschen’s entry for the Pre-Raphaelites – a group of artists who came together in the 19th century as a ‘brotherhood’ in defiance of the English Royal Academy of Arts. The brotherhood favoured composition styles that pre-dated…

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    Books

    The Unexpected Nature of War in 3 Classic Children’s Stories

    January 31, 2025 - By 

    The three children’s stories that I enjoyed reading the most in recent years shared two things particularly in common. First, the fact that they feature anthropomorphic animals, which perhaps isn’t surprising given that this is pretty standard fare for children’s stories. But the second commonality, which is the fact that in each text, those animals went to war and actively engaged in at least one battle or more, did surprise me – especially when I considered the treatment of warfare in each book. **Spoilers for The Wind in the Willows, Watership Down and Redwall ** In Watership Down, life is…

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    Books

    Personal Demons and the Fear of the Other in ‘The Woman in White’

    October 24, 2024 - By 

    I suspected The Woman in White would be an excellent Autumnal read. A gothic mystery novel published in 1860, it seemed sufficiently sensational and spooky enough in the lead up to Halloween. The title itself evokes ghostly connotations of my most feared variety – spectral women dressed all in white, wandering around graveyards and doing the creepy things that ghosts tend to do. While The Woman in White does have plenty of brushes with the supernatural, this actually isn’t what made it so eerie to read. Ultimately, Wilkie Collins avoids obvious scares in favour of creating a more subtle, secretive…

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    Books

    Hidden Melancholy and Nostalgia in Howard Pyle’s ‘Robin Hood’

    September 24, 2024 - By 

    In modern times, our perception of myths is very much shaped by different translations. With the Robin Hood legends, I mean this both literally and figuratively: the earliest Robin Hood ballads date back to the 15th century, and there have been many translations of the Middle English tales since. Howard Pyle’s 1883 children’s novel The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood is one of these, along with dozens of film and television adaptations which base themselves on the medieval tellings. For many people born after the 1970s, their awareness of the character will stem from the likes of Disney’s Robin Hood…

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    Books

    Farming, Love, Fate: The Natural World in ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’

    September 11, 2024 - By 

    Nature is one of my favourite elements in a book; whether it is soaring mountain peaks in a fantasy adventure, or the simplistic English countryside in a short but sincere novella, I love seeing the ways different authors present the natural world. I decided to read Far From the Madding Crowd with the expectation that Thomas Hardy would immerse me in the sort of sweeping nature prose I encountered while reading Tess of the D’Urbervilles – with a healthy dash of Victorian melodrama – and I wasn’t disappointed. Nature turned out to be a core characteristic of the novel, one…

  • Books - Literary Britain

    A Visit to the Birthplace of Jane Austen’s Most Famous Books: Chawton Cottage

    July 23, 2024 - By 

    Nestled in the Hampshire countryside, a modestly sized but unassuming house sits on a main road going through the village of Chawton. The village itself is as picturesque as most small English parishes come, but it’s the house covered in commemorative plaques which draws the eye. This is the house which was once inhabited by one of the world’s most celebrated authors – Jane Austen. It’s difficult, as you drive down Winchester road, not to picture Jane walking along in her own day. She was extremely fond of the Hampshire countryside having spent the first 25 years of her life…

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    Books - Reviews

    ‘Jamaica Inn’ Convinced Me – Daphne du Maurier is the Master of Writing Popular, ‘Real’ Literature

    June 26, 2024 - By 

    Margaret Forster once wrote that Daphne du Maurier ‘satisfied all the questionable criteria of popular fiction, and yet satisfied too the exacting requirements of “real literature”, something very few novelists ever do.’ Having read Rebecca a year ago, I knew that du Maurier was particularly talented when it came to creating suspenseful stories, books that have lent themselves to being not only re-read but also re-adpated, again and again, making du Maurier one of the most beloved English language authors I have covered. But it was reading Jamaica Inn this summer that I realised how right Forster was. It’s difficult…

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    Books

    Why Beatrix Potter is Still Beloved 100 Years Later

    June 12, 2024 - By 

    Why Do The Stories of Beatrix Potter Continue to Endure With Adults & Children Alike? Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit was first published commercially in 1902, and since then has never been out of print. The fact that 4 Beatrix Potter books are bought every minute is a pretty common piece of trivia, however I would be keen to know how many of those 4 books have been bought for children, and how many were bought for adults. I was 25 when I read the first of Potter’s tales, and it did not take me long to realise…

  • stone bridge leading to the medieval eltz castle
    Books

    Why ‘Dracula’ Was the First Classic I Fell in Love With

    March 10, 2024 - By 

    I have a funny relationship with classic novels. They make up probably 80% of my bookshelf, and yet I find myself hesitating every time I open the first page of one. It’s because I’ve come to realise that ‘classic’ does not guarantee enjoyment. Yes, it usually does guarantee something well written, insightful and intellectually valuable. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to enjoy reading it. I can appreciate The Grapes of Wrath and its heartbreaking commentary on American industrialisation, while also knowing that I never want to subject myself to reading the approx. 500 page monstrosity again. When I…