20th Century
The Thin Red Line
A fellow poster suggested that I should write a piece about the art of…er…writing since it has become, rather later in life than I would have liked, my profession. Flattering as this suggestion is – [more…]
Ralph Spurrier
Book Review
Stories from the Shelf, Volume One
Browsing secondhand bookshop shelves has been one of life’s delights, from the time I was barely in my teens and visiting the Croydon Bookshop in the Old Town (now long demolished to accommodate the flyover) [more…]
Arts
THE FINAL HONK
Yesterday, I spent some time with the dead. I hadn’t intended to visit the natural burial ground set just below the Jack and Jill Windmills on the South Downs but the weather was good and [more…]
Arts
A Life in Three Honks, Honk the Second
At the end of part 1 we left our intrepid teenager entering the portals of the famous Foyles Bookshop in the Charing Cross Road, London. Founded in 1903 initially selling secondhand books from a small [more…]
Arts
Three Men on a Bike, Part One
I suppose it must have been during the 1965 Easter break from the Sixth Form that Bogs, Cough, Pat and myself decided that during the summer months between the AS level exams and the start [more…]
Arts
A Life in Three Honks, Honk the First
Being born in Birmingham in 1947 I was lucky enough to have ridden on the trams along Oulton Boulevard before they were scrapped in the early 50’s and regularly traveled into central Birmingham on the [more…]
20th Century
Book Review: Silent Village, Robert Pike
There have been a number of books on the disaster that overran Oradour-sur-Glane on Saturday June 10th 1944 but this is the first one that I have read that finely details the lives of the [more…]
Biography
Take Your Daughter to Work Day
Prologue by Roger Ackroyd Recently located in the piles of papers here at Ackroyd Towers was a copy of a report made by Lily Ackroyd on her “Take your daughter to work day” assignment for [more…]
Fiction
The Butcher Began To Kill The Ox, Ch 3
CHAPTER 3 The light rain that had begun when he got off the train at Bradford on Avon had now turned into a steady drizzle and to judge by the lowering clouds coming in from [more…]