22nd August, Daffodil Hotel The UK’s Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage has, apparently, been giving readings hosted by Wordsworth, Grasmere for at least two decades and the occasions are always a sell-out. As the man himself said to the audience, “I think some of you have been coming to my readings even longer than I have!”… Read More An Audience with Simon Armitage, Ambleside
I, Claudius is another of those classic books that appears on every ‘Must Read’ list. Regular readers of my reviews might guess this would immediately make me suspicious regarding the quality. ‘Classics’ are very much a hit and miss affair. Initially, I was not much impressed. Almost the entire book is in reported speech: Claudius… Read More Book Review: I, Claudius by Robert Graves
This collection of poems, solely focusing on life, and the people ‘existing’, in North Korea is, to say the least, dark and depressing. The poet has not pulled any punches with this her second collection. We get the bleak picture of life in the communist dictatorship. It is hard to read but certainly compelling. Yet,… Read More Book Review: Notes from the North by Suji Kwock Kim
I’ll come straight to it: this book is utterly pointless. It’s a pity because it need not have been. The idea – of presenting a brief history of twenty-eight of the major nations of the world – was a good one. There is, of course, an immediate issue with deciding which twenty-eight should be chosen… Read More Book Review: Histories of Nations edited by Peter Furtado
Write Out Loud 