Authors Electric

                                                  Reading Reviews for Online Living                                                 Since the pandemic I have noticed something interesting that has emerged online connected with books. Several dedicated readers have been reviewing books sent to them by publishers and posting the reviews for their followers to beg, borrow, or buy in order to read. These reviewers have a variety of handles: There is  Findingtimetowrite , by Marina Sofia. This deals mainly with books in translation which she publishes;  Adventures in reading, running and working from home  by Liz Dexter who likes non-fiction and who has commented on my own and others’ Authors Electric posts;  Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramb...

Photo from 'The Telegraph', Kolkata - 20 May 2020 Corona + Amphan is the worst double whammy one can think of - and we are facing that at the moment. By “we”, I mean Bangladesh and two eastern states of India – Orissa and West Bengal. Cyclone Amphan hit us on 20 th May. Last year, a similar cyclone - Fani - had hit the coastal belt lining the Bay of Bengal in early May. It coincided with my daughter Srishti’s Birthday - so, the small party I’d arranged at home for her had to be cancelled. This year, a day after Amphan, with no internet, we could barely wish our niece in Hyderabad on her Birthday. While the ISD call did connect, all that could be heard from the other side were garbled voices… but at least, we could shout out a “Happy Birthday”!  Privileged kids Birthday celebrations are luxuries that can be done without for a year or two (though for children it can be a bitter disappointment; eagerly wait as they do for months for their BIG day). But even for them,...

My mother had lots of favourite sayings. She inherited some from my grandmother, acquired some along the way and appropriated one from my father, whose motto was 'Never apologise'. As I've got older I can see the point of that last one. If you get to the stage of having to apologise, it's really too late for that to help. I tried to convince my sons of that when they were much younger, but I doubt if it sunk in then. Because my grandmother mostly spoke in Scots, one of her sayings was 'A bonny face sets a dish-clout'*, something of which I have yet to be convinced although my mother used to drag it out whenever I complained about having nothing to wear. One of my mother's sayings was 'Never go back'. I suppose I can see the point of that too, as I get older. Unfortunately she tended not to want to look back either, and was completely baffled when I decided to study history at university. She was also oddly resistant to any of us looking into the f...

Cool cats Dear Santa, please could you send me a time machine, Doctor optional, although David Tennant would be a nice addition. He could pilot it for me. I want to go back to 1950s Leeds. Just for a little while. Oh, and I want to be a child again, so that I don't find it too much of a shock. But with just enough adult hindsight to be able to observe with a certain amount of clarity. And take notes.  Tall order, I know. The alternative, as I've discovered, may be a magical website called Leodis, which is one of the old names for the city. You can visit it here . I first discovered this wonderful site when my cousin sent me a link to it, and I must confess that back when I was working as a writing fellow for the Royal Literary Fund, I browsed it in between appointments whenever my students were late. It was ideal for filling in the odd five or ten minutes of free time, easy to click on a few photographs and just as easy to click off them again. Now I've bee...

What will you be doing tomorrow? Will you be tuning in to watch the flotilla sailing up the Thames, throwing a street party with your neighbours, or pulling the duvet over your head and wishing you were in Alicante or Argentina or anywhere else that isn't festooned in red, white and blue? I've been thinking about patriotism and nostalgia a lot recently because my historical trilogy, 'Swallowcliffe Hall', is centred on an English country house at three pivotal moments in British history: 1890, 1914 and 1939. Also because I've leapt on the 'Downton Abbey' bandwagon with alacrity (although the series was published in print way before the TV programme appeared). Part of the reason why the books are selling here and in America, I'm sure, is because people love looking back to an era when life seemed well-ordered and certain, and everyone knew their place. We view country-house life like one big security blanket: a safe little microcosm compared ...