A heavy responsibility well acquitted

Diana Wynne Jones Reflections: On the Magic of Writing Foreword by Neil Gaiman Greenwillow Books 2012 Where to start? Diana Wynne Jones was a very individual and distinctive voice within British fantasy writing, highly regarded and rightly so, though that recognition was perhaps long coming: for example, though I was aware of the name I […]

Who is the Dark Lord?

Roland Chesney has found a way to access a parallel world, a world of real fantasy and magic. For four decades he has sent Pilgrim Parties on tourist package holidays to these lands, forcing one hapless individual after another to become the Dark Lord for the duration while the tourists attempt to defeat his forces. The […]

A slow smouldering

Henry James: The Spoils of Poynton Edited with an introduction by David Lodge, notes by Patricia Crick Penguin Classics 1987 (1897) This is an extraordinarily intense novella: intense in its use of language and intense in its unremitting focus on just two or three characters. First and foremost in the cast list is Fleda Vetch, a young […]

Cockatoo memento mori

Grandmother Mary once had a canary (or so it was said at the zoo) though I was distracted, nay, even attracted by large piles of elephant poo. It wasn’t the smell — this much I could tell — that drew my attention to these, nor even the texture or neat architecture occasioning all my unease but the […]

The Joy of Books (2)

We’ve seen the sign. We’ve admired the façade. We’ve gone as far as opening the door and stepping over the threshold. What delights await us as the tinkle of the bell dies away?