I've been seeing quite a lot lately about 'Hull, City of Culture' (Frankie Howerd voice: Don't Mock) and muttering to myself, 'and what about Winifred Holtby, author of the outstanding novel of the local area?'
But, anyway, there is a piece in today's Guardian Saturday Review that is all about her: Winifred Holtby: author, feminist, campaigner, ( Read more... )

So, today we made an early start in order to catch the first train Edinburgh-York on which our tickets would be valid.
Delayed... Delayed... Delayed...
So we decided that we would get the next one -
And while we were standing on the other platform waiting, an announcement that first train had been cancelled and passengers should get the next one.
( Read more... )

There is interesting interview with Stewart Lee in today's Observer New Review, which I approach from the point of view of someone who really never got into standup, but is vaguely aware of Lee because he sometimes does a column in this same place, and finds much of what he says rather sensible.
But I came to this: He’s an unusual case because - ( Read more... )

Interesting, well, fairly, piece on contraception and the experiences of women of several generations with same. Let us note the difference between woman now in her 20s 'A conversation revealed that a lot of us forget to take our pills' (which is such a post-availability of morning-after pill attitude?) and Yvonne Roberts, who is, approx, my ( Read more... )

Isn't this person - Where Do You Learn Your Cultural Traditions? - the person who posted that diatribe about shelfies as being about flaunting one's cultural privilege? (And then got significant kickback.)

I don't know about anybody else, but I learnt quite a lot about differing cultural traditions and practices by reading. And not just fiction ( Read more... )

Further to that discussion about having books/being a reader and its orthogonal relationship to social class (and I have ranted before about the presumption that ORL UR KULCHA R BELONG 2 TEH ELITE) -

I loved this piece by Philip French about being sent a journal of film viewing kept during 1932 by a young woman who was about to leave school at 17 ( Read more... )

Okay, it's Robert McCrum, so has form:
The pioneer spy stories of John Buchan and Dornford Yates reflected the male-dominated world of London's clubland.

There speaks a man who has not read Greenmantle, Mr Standfast or The Three Hostages, no?

***

In Dept of, as I have previously had occasion similarly to remark:

Barbara Ellen on the 'unwitting ( Read more... )

I thought this was funny, though I haven't yet made my way through all the parts: Facebook Newsfeed History of the World

While I take Robert McCrum's point about the perniciousness of fiction written to a formula (assuming it to be at all true that the current wisdom is "A new novel should be summarised in a single sentence, and should stop dinner ( Read more... )

The actual copyright page gives Mitchison and Chief Linchwe II (of the Bakgatla tribe of what was then Bechuanaland).

This is a book by Mitchison about her relationship with Linchwe and the Bakgatla at the time when the Bechunaland Protectorate was in the process of becoming independent as Botswana. It's perhaps a book of its time and I'm not sure ( Read more... )

Sigh, groan, I'm inclined to say this guy isn't even wrong in his jeremiad about criticism, he's whiffling off in a world of his own: A refusal to heed the advice of highbrow cultural critics is nothing new. But when the public can quickly share their own - different - views on Twitter, Facebook, myDigg and other social media, is criticism dead? ( Read more... )