Growing up in Brookmans Park in the 70’s and 80’s, Tracey Thorn accumulated more music memories than I have, and definitely had a more ‘adventurous’ teenage experience than I did in suburban Solihull.
Scattered though out, and coming into focus at the end, are the relationships with her parents, and how you reevaluate them with hindsight and the benefit of your own experience.
Publisher page: Another Planet: A Teenager in Suburbia – Tracey Thorn
Alternating chapters of newspaper articles by or about Maud West and Susannah Stapleton’s slow and steady sleuthing to uncover the life and times of ‘London’s Leading Lady Detective’.
Makes me wish I could ask my nanas about their lives, growing up at the start of the 20th century, a couple of decades behind Edith Maria Barber aka Maud West.
Publisher page: The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective: Secrets and Lies in the Golden Age of Crime: A Remarkable True Story – Susannah Stapleton
Kate Teltscher follows eighteenth century East India Company man George Bogle on his diplomatic trade missions to Bhutan and Tibet in the hope of opening up opportunities in Qing China, as British imperial ambitions emerge under Governer-General Warren Hastings.
Author page: The High Road To China – Kate Teltscher
Reading Maggie O’Farrell’s “seventeen brushes with death”, and, in the closing chapter, one of her daughter’s, I am all the more amazed at the novels – the wonderful novels – she’s written.
Astounding. Inspiring.
Author’s page: I Am I Am I Am – Maggie O’Farrell
Another beautiful collection of essays; some long some short, all thought-provoking.
Publisher page: Surfacing – Kathleen Jamie