Pun based title, when I think of one

Longbourn is home to the Bennet family. They are Mr and Mrs Bennet, with their five daughters, Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Lydia and Kitty. If this sounds familiar, it's hardly surprising. However while  Jo Baker's book Longbourn is set in the Bennet household which readers worldwide know and love from Jane Austen's most famous novel, it has as its focus a cast of characters who are usually only fleetingly seen in classic novels, the various servants who keep the household running.  There is quite a cottage industry - or should I say, stately home industry - devoted to spinoffs from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice . Many years ago I gave my Mum one of the better known examples, Pemberley by Emma Tennant. At that time I hadn't read any Jane Austen myself, but I knew she was a fan; as far as I remember she was non-commital about its worth. I've just had a quick check online and it does seem that the majority of these books are continuations of the story. I confe...

 You will know the riikinkukko better as the peacock . Or, strictly speaking, the blue or Indian peacock. I didn't know until just now that there are three species of peacock. The green peacock is found in South East Asia, and a third, the Congo peacock in Africa. Quite mysterious how that one ended up where it is. They all have striking trains for display. Of course the extraordinary multi-eyed feather display of the male peacock isn't evident in this picture, not least because that isn't a male peacock. Peacocks have been introduced all around the world, especially for decoration in ornamental gardens . My local tip (ie. local council refuse disposal site) is not an ornamental garden. Nevertheless, from somewhere nearby which I haven't figured out yet, they come and hang out at the tip. At first it's a pleasant surprise to see them, but soon they're more of a nuisance, getting in the way as you park and unload your stuff (today, hedge clippings, cardboard, ...

Coming Home by Sue Gee tells the life story of a family, born at the end of Britain's time in India and then making its unassuming way in the aftermath of the Second World War, sending two new lives out into the world while experiencing the fading away of the old. Many of the books I've read recently have been thought provoking and worthy of comment, and yet I haven't done so. Yet this... Maybe I shouldn't write about it, because there is so much that is personal attached to my response to it. Which I can't ignore. I have glanced at some other reactions to the book, and while it's been mostly liked, it doesn't seem to rank as highly as others of her books. Myself, I have read The Hours of the Night and loved it, it's beautifully written and left a lasting impression. I knew I'd read more by this author. Coming Home seemed a natural choice, because of its background in British India. This is one of a long list of story elements which are echoed i...

I finished this book hating someone. Someone who doesn't exist. Sarah Moss ' writing can do that to you, and paradoxically the hate is fiercer for the fact that the villain of Ghost Wall isn't out-and-out evil; though he's not far off it. It's 17 year old Sylvie 's Dad, who signs the family up for a summer 'camp' experiencing Iron Age life up in Northumberland, organised by a university Professor, who's brought three of his students along. Her Dad is obsessed with the life of the pre-Roman peoples of Britain, of Northern England particularly. He's often drawn the family into this, so Sylvie and her Mum have often found theselves spending their holidays trudging aong ancient pathways, or going to museums to view ancient artifacts. And once he took Sylvie with him to see one of the bog people at an exhibition; a sacrificial victim her appearance preserved by the peat, who turned out to be a young girl not unlike Sylvie herself. At this summer cam...

Jerome K. Jerome wrote one famous book, Three Men in a Boat , still very readable (and highly entertaining) today, and likely to remain so for some time yet. It created a much imitated formula for comic narratives based on the farcical adventures of three foolish men. The realisation that this formula could be applied anywhere transformed the BBC's Top Gear from a worthy but slightly dull and definitely niche motoring programme into one of the most watched general entertainment shows on the planet.  There are four rather than three foolish men in Jerome's Novel Notes . And while there are any number of interesting occasional characters, notably the unnamed narrator's wife Ethelberta , and their marvellously nonplussed and unimpressed maidservant Amenda  (is that a historical spelling of Amanda?), they don't partake in any picaresque adventures. No, they assemble, regularly at first, and then more and more infrequently, in order to write a great novel . They are convin...

"Harrow on the Hooghly" was a nickname given to the New School of Calcutta and Darjeeling , on its founding in 1940. The Hooghly is the principal river running through Calcutta; Harrow is one of England's most prominent private schools. It was one of a number of emergency schools set up early on in the Second World War, for children of British parents in India who would otherwise have been educating them in Britain. In 1940 India would have seemed much safer than Britain; there was a real threat of invasion by Germany and, worse, the sea lanes were becoming very dangerous. Getting passage as a civilian was very difficult, and the normal route to India via the Suez Canal was impossible until after VE Day in 1945. There was an excess of refugee children in 1940, with a pressing need to be educated, who could not be accommodated in the existing European schools in India. Then  Japan went to war with Britain and the situation in India suddenly looked very threatening. If...

I gave Kate Atkinson's Life After Life a star straight away when I noted it down in my book list last night. Meaning, that I was (and am) already sure that at the year's end, this will turn out to have been one of the books to have made a lasting impact on me. It's been hanging around on my 'to read' shelf for a while; I admit that I only picked it up now for the quirk, of reading it (and therefore listing it) immediately after Life ie. the Keith Richards book. With which it shares almost nothing, and on the other hand, everything. Especially a feeling for that elusive sense of what we are, adrift in the stream, as life flows on. But expressed very differently :) Before you even read the back cover blurb, you're assaulted by profuse encomiums (apologies - that's my sole lifetime use of that word) from reviewers and famous literary names, a few of which you can see on the cover. There are many more inside, before you get anywhere near the book itself. I wis...