This millennial look at the history of Britain and France is told with wry, sometimes childishly irritating, and rarely laugh-inducing humour. It’s pretty comprehensive, coming in at just under 650…
While this is one of the classic war books and written from the almost unique perspective of a woman, if you can find an abridged version to read, get that…
Picked this up from a fellow photographer at a photography event one evening and, were it not for the fact that I need to get up at 5am for work,…
This memoir is basically a eulogy to Gary’s mother. Seeing as I have never really had a mother to speak of, this was an interesting one for me to read…
I kind of like history and so, when I started to dip into this in a bookshop, I thought it would be right up my street. In the end, I…
By 1921 when this was published, Papini was a man deeply passionate for Christ. This is apparent from the very introduction, let alone throughout the commentary he has written on…
What the chart of my progress below does not reveal is that the day I started this was in fact in May 2013 whereas I didn’t finish it, after a…
As I’m tackling Proust’s mammoth In Search of Lost Time (ISOLT) this year (and currently over the halfway mark yeah!), when I saw this in a charity shop, I just…
Tom Wright has done it again with an extremely readable and very accessible translation and commentary on the Gospel according to Mark. I’m reading my way through the entire set…
Once I’d settled into this, it was a beautiful read. Naipaul is a Nobel Laureate and so you expect that the prose will be challenging. But while A Bend in…
I haven’t bought an annual since… oohh… probably since Beano days back in the early 80s. But having moved to a country where Private Eye is probably banned and would…
I was looking for something that would simply take me through the Gospels of the New Testament, something without a fancy cover and a website full of Flash videos and…
This was and wasn’t what I expected. I think I underestimated the historical context and so failed to appreciate the significance of the story I was being told. I found…
About fourteen billion years ago when I was a young child, I remember my mother had this book on my parents’ bookshelf. I remember three things about it. Firstly, it…
Like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, this is the agonising tale of humanity bravely told. Fisk displays the full range of his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Middle East, knowledge…
In preparation for heading out to Saudi to work, I started to teach myself Arabic. First thing to master is the beautiful script. My local library had a copy of…
There, in a charity shop, completely unblemished as in a proper bookshop, lay Weir’s encylopaedic description of one of the most magnificent courts of English royalty. And it was mine…
Right, I think it’s time to share the news with the faithful few who follow this blog: I’m off to Saudi Arabia in a few weeks to work teaching English…