I just went 'WOW' and grinned when I read this - Constancia Romilly and Benjamin Treuhaft, letter to The Guardian We’re saddened to hear of the death of our cousin Max Mosley (Obituary, 24 May). Although we are from different branches of the infamous Mitford sisters, we have admired Max for his fight against invasion of privacy. Our mother, Jessica ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Revolutionary Imaginings in the 1790s, which was very good, given that not my period and somewhat outwith my usual academic disciplinary interests. The pdf format a bit irksome ( Read more... )

But really, this new bio of Mrs Delany is either being badly misrepresented in this review, or just BAD: Mrs Delany: A Life by Clarissa Campbell Orr review - an 18th-century late bloomer. Mary Delany found fame for her flower ‘mosaiks’ in her 70s, but this followed decades of turbulence. I may not know that much about Mrs D, but I do know that she ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Dead Certain, have designated Hartzmark a keeper, and wonder why the series ended there (it was not like certain other series I like, where the author had clearly painted our series protag into a serious emotional corner in the ongoing arc and possibly couldn't think how to get her out of it and still functional in crime- ( Read more... )

In a piece in the Guardian's review section today, not, alas, available online, re books on 'our hidden past'.
'History is mostly about men, and until depressingly recently, little was written by women'.
Except - and okay, I am perhaps rather more aware of this than I might be from reading Dabby's book on women as public moralists in Britain - ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished reread of Conspiracy Theory. Not, I think, one of the top entries in the series.
Carol Dyhouse, Heartthrobs: A History of Women and Desire (2017) - mostly C19th-C20th and possibly trying to do a bit too much in the space, but shooting off lots of interesting ideas and materials, and to my mind to be preferred to those works ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Battle for Bittora - I was a bit *sigh* that the romance went the way it did, and I thought the ending was a bit, well, rather late in the day for her to have that epiphany. Not sure the elements meshed very happily, in all.
Elizabeth Gill (not, I may say, the currently alive novelist of that name who pops up in the GoodReads ( Read more... )

What I read
Finally made my way through William McCarthy, Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment (2008) which is pretty much 'what you never thought about asking about Mrs Barbauld' and is all about the redemption from the condescension of history. Barbauld (nee Aikin) was a significant literary and cultural figure from the final decades ( Read more... )

What I read
Was finally in that particular state of mind to plug on with Grey Granite (A Scots Quair 3), in which Ewan increasingly loses the reader's sympathy, which I know is not the point. Also, while I think the Chris sections are well-done, I'm just not sure that she would be quite so much into the sear-and-withered time of life, even with the ( Read more... )

What I read
Last week's episode of Tremontaine.
The next two volumes in the Protection Inc series by Zoe Chant: Defender Dragon and Protector Panther, which do what they say on the tin: BBW + shifter paranormal romance, in somewhat different genres but with a fair amount of thrillery/action type stuff.
Josephine Elder, Exile for Annis (1938), which ( Read more... )