Susan Hill’s latest novel is A Change of Circumstance.
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But of course this new book is by Peter Ackroyd, celebrated biographer, historian and chronicler, a bit of a polymath, a man who has written wonderfully informative and erudite books about Blake, the river Thames, Venice, and introductions to all the novels of Dickens, so naturally one expects a good deal more from The English
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It would not have been so easy to describe what Joanna Trollope’s early novels were ‘about’ in a few words, but recently she has been writing what the Americans call ‘issue books’, and they can be more readily encapsulated. It would not have been so easy to describe what Joanna Trollope’s early novels were ‘about’
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The clue comes early on in the book. ‘Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,’ said the Rat, ‘And that’s something that doesn’t matter either to you or me. I’ve never been there and I’m never going, nor you either, if you’ve got any sense at all. Don’t ever refer to it again please.’
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First, I must declare an interest. I have never met Nicholas Haslam. As everyone else has, this makes me uniquely qualified to review his book without partiality. But not without interest, for Haslam is an intriguing man. I think there is more to him than meets the eye — whichever Nicholas Haslam it is that
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Old detectives rarely die — or age, for that matter: Poirot is forever 60, Sherlock Holmes 50, P. D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh a handsome 38 or so. Old detectives rarely die — or age, for that matter: Poirot is forever 60, Sherlock Holmes 50, P. D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh a handsome 38 or so. But
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‘Be very careful, Susans, I have find an adder in the wheelbarrow.’ ‘Nah, it’ll be a grass snake, Spiros.’ Stern glare. ‘Susans, don’t forget I am from Corfu.’ ‘OK, it’s an adder.’ All God’s creatures are welcome here — but an adder? I was treated for my wasp allergy by Professor David Warrell, a world
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Of how many novelists can it be said that they have never written a bad sentence? Well, it can be said of William Trevor, as it could of his fellow countryman John McGahern, and of many another Irish novelist. What was it that so formed them, to write such elegant, flexible, lucid, beautiful but serviceable
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Some friends home-school their three children and hats off to them. I was the sort of cruel, wicked mother who required hers to be out of the house for three full terms a year and could never have taught them round the kitchen table. They do it because their children are bright and have inquiring
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They don`t make them like this any more – they make them differently. Whatever, the 1982 BBC television version of John le Carré’s great spy novel Smiley’s People is a masterclass – in adaptation, script-writing, filming and acting – and in its re-origination for DVD it comes up fresh as paint, no detail or shading
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When I saw bewildered little Alfie Patten holding his baby I wanted to weep. Though, the 15 –going on- 35 year old mother was winding her daughter with all the casual expertise of a girl in the driving seat of the entire situation. You wonder who to blame first. Not the two kids involved. Sex
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I once wrote in the Spectator about my near-death from a wasp sting. What I didn’t mention was that as the ambulance raced up to A and E the paramedic told me he had said a prayer for me on the way. I was in no fit state to object, I needed all the help
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Susan Hill reappraises Charles Dickens’s classic You may be sure you have done more good by this little publication, fostered more kind feelings and prompted more positive acts of beneficence than can be traced to all the pulpits and confessionals in Christendom. So wrote the Edinburgh critic, Lord Jeffrey — not an easy man to
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Susan Hill recalls how much she relied on her health visitor and bemoans the decline of this once-universal service: the victim of bureaucratic ‘targeting’ and government ignorance You can be sure of one thing about government. If it ain’t broke, they will fix it and don’t worry about the breaking bit, they will do that
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Sky like the inside of a saucepan and a mean little drizzle stinging your face, garden sunk deep in midwinter gloom, except for the winter-flowering cherry trees with small, sugar-pink blossoms prinking from bare branches to lift the heart. I look for the first snowdrop, then the first aconite, then crocus, but forget about these
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There are some classic novels about a boy growing up — Great Expectations and Kes spring to mind. Well, here is another. The Highest Tide is one of the best novels it has been my pleasure to read for many a day. And its cover is one of the worst it has been my misfortune
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The closed-circle Agatha Christieian detective story has rather fallen out of fashion in favour of the ‘crime novel’, the essential difference being that while every detective story is a crime novel the reverse is not necessarily the case. As the doyenne of the detective story P. D. James rarely strays far from home and The
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Literature feeds off other literature and why ever not? Think of Jean Rhys’s The Wide Sargasso Sea and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, bred from, respectively, Jane Eyre and Mrs Dalloway. Think of Shakespeare for that matter, who told a good story provided someone else had told it to him first. To get the most out