A visit to the Brontes
When I read the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth I had a yearning to visit the Wordsworth homes in the Lake...
Of centuries and cows
These quirky comments by Steinbeck charmed me - first his reaction to the first room he chose to work in,...
Librarian as satrap
Having known nothing but kindness among librarians, this striking description of a martinet guarding his books almost at the point...
Basilicata bibliomotocarro
Antonio La Cava, a retired school teacher, converted a quintessential Italian vehicle, the three-wheeler micro-van, into a travelling library.
For...
A wilderness of books
This vast languishing resource was first brought home to me in Erik Reinert's How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and...
A luminous spot in Chicago
What makes a city great? What makes a civilization? How about a bright, quiet, dazzling new building in the heart...
A bookshop in Chicago – Open Books
In preparing our trip to Chicago we looked up the 'ten best' bookshops in the city. Most proved too far,...
When did you begin?
Recently I read an old penny-paperback of The Grapes of Wrath. I was about three-quarters of the way through when...
Pencil and paper
Steinbeck wrote with pencil on the ubiquitous American yellow pad. Computers and word-processing came too late for him, and so...
A writer’s reading room
During Easter in Aosta, I started reading a favourite writer, Patrick Leigh Fermor, beginning a two-volume treat, Mani and Roumeli. ...
A writer’s retreat
We first noticed it when it was still a construction site, but even on a grimly dank and overcast day,...
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