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Columbia, Cats, Cass, and a Spring Stickybeak
Before decamping to Brooklyn for the month I saw this on a utility box on Riverside Drive. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to share thoughts about Columbia University. But the daffs were out and there were others busy stamping their ideas on the sidewalk by the park. These were presumably inspired by Jonathan Haidt’s new book – The Anxious…
The Affair of the Chocolate Teapot
Midge Hazelbrow, the indomitable co-head of Wayward St. Etheldreda’s Academy, took herself for a brisk constitutional down Riverside Drive to the Eleanor Roosevelt statue. By the time she stepped back into the St. Etheldreda’s building that had been her professional home for almost thirty years, her mind was clear. Of course, she’d already apologized to Tim Endibel for her injudicious…
Art and the Garden
If you are in New York City and looking for a outing here’s a suggestion: Wave Hill Garden in the Bronx. We were there on a bright morning this week and it was glorious. It really is one of the world’s great outdoor works of art with 28 acres of gardens, and woodlands. And with the view out over the…
1940 and the #1940Club
Hope I’m not jumping the gun here but the #1940Club starts next week and I’ve been gearing up and getting ready. The idea is simple. It’s a fun event with no pressure because you can choose anything from the year and read as much or as little as suits you. You can share on your blogs, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, in…
Literal Nazis and the Retro-transing of History
Researching Marienbad and the Savoy led me to Erika Mann and all the gossip, scandal, politics, and drama of her family. I wanted to read her account of life in pre-war Germany The Lights Go Down in part of my preparation for the 1940 Club and here. I couldn’t track down a copy so I read School for Barbarians: Education…
Marienbad
Every Christmas growing up my family received a greeting card from the Stingl family. I knew that my grandmother, mother, and aunt had known Fritz Stingl in the 1930s. He was Czech and he had arrived at Croydon airport as a refugee and been turned back even though they were at the barrier waiting to sponsor him. And then there…
Prospect and Retrospect
New Year’s Eve and a traditional moment to look back in review and forward with a measure of whatever optimism can be mustered. Time for a little navel-gazing self-indulgence and an opportunity for some random comments and observations on some of the bright spots. I wrote 55 blog posts in 2021 including this one and the most fun to write…
Large Dog Eats Anything Loves Children
It’s always fun when a tiresome book about the rules of the English language gets debunked and when some clever clogs points out that the prose of said tiresome tome is full of the very errors it decries. So it was with Lynn Truss’s bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation The book is this month’s…
Anna and Gertrude
“I am not interested in complicated things nor in the commonplace, I like to paint simple things that are a little strange.” – Gertrude Abercrombie After Pied Piper and The Thinking, my explorations led me into the byways of British literature of WW2 evacuation and evacuees. On that journey, I made – and continue to make – discoveries: Writers and…
Three Lords and a Lady
A musical backdrop to Unreal City: the London of the Lonely Londoners When the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in June 1948 there were a good number of musicians on board. We know that Jamaican musician Delroy Stephens was there because he organized a fundraising concert to pay for the fare for one of the stowaways -Evelyn Wauchope from Jamaica.…
Angela Brazil, the Tribal World of School and School Change
Scooterons-nous vite. It’s Back to School with Angela Brazil Long before Harry Potter – and indeed long before all those school story authors who gave us Malory Towers and St. Clare’s and the Chalet School and the Abbey School and Jennings and Billy Bunter – there was Angela Brazil. Brazil – rhymes with dazzle – didn’t invent the school story…
Mustn’t Grumble
Mustn’t Grumble We mustn’t grumble We have wireless and cable And there’s food in the shops. Beyoncé had a birthday and the game is on tonight. We have work to do. And all the really bad things like weather and politics are a long way away so we don’t have to worry. And there’s always pizza delivery. We can still walk…
My Life Among the Spirit People
The Background One evening in the spring of 1919 a soldier in his uniform appeared at the front door of 115, Strathyre Avenue, Norbury, London. Frances Sims knew who it was immediately. It was her husband – Lance Corporal Frank Herbert Sims, known as Bert. The only problem was that Lance Corporal Sims had died at Taranto, Italy in January. …
W. H. Auden and New York
Eighty years ago today – on January 26th, 1939 – the poet W.H.Auden – accompanied by his friend and sometime lover Christopher Isherwood – stepped off the boat and arrived in New York City. It wasn’t their first visit. They had spent two happy weeks in the city in 1938, arriving by train from Vancouver on their way back from…