by Dennis Wheatley This is my second post on the recently-reissued novels of Dennis Wheatley. For me, The Satanist is by a margin Wheatley's best black magic story. As well as being an edge-of-the-seat adventure, it utilises a theme that has always had a fascination for me - the sometimes uncanny relationship between identical twins. …
Category: Books
Go Set A Watchman
by Harper Lee A Review 'It had never occurred to Jean Louise that she was a girl: her life had been one of reckless pummeling activity . . . she must now go into a world of femininity, a world she despised.' On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a black woman in Montgomery, Alabama refused …
The Devil Rides Out . . . Again
In 2013, Bloomsbury Publishers announced that they intended to reissue the novels of Dennis Wheatley as e-books. As an avid reader of Wheatley's stories - many years ago! - I was excited at the prospect of their being on the market again, and indeed at possibly seeing some of them again in print. Out …
The End of an Age
Hotel Savoy by Joseph Roth A Review It is 1919 or 1920. World War I has only recently ended. After three years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia, Gabriel Dan makes his way to the West across Russia, taking casual work as he goes. However, he needs money and breaks his journey in an Eastern …
The Woman in White
by Wilkie Collins A Review Published in 1860, The Woman in White, in its language and style, is very much a novel of its time, adopting first person multiple narratives, melodrama and bizarre coincidences in its telling. It is a mystery thriller, almost gothic in tone, combining themes that resonate even today: the equality of …
Tempus Fugit!
Second Anniversary It seems I've just passed the second anniversary of my blog here on WordPress. I've written 51 posts in the past year, but have fallen behind my Classics Club reading, managing only 5 classics book reviews against a target of 10. There are so many other interesting and compelling books to read and …
A Thoughtful, Studious Man
A Fathers' Day Tribute John Lockhart Junior, February 1905- July 1987 (adapted and abridged from my family history book Tapestry) My father, John Lockhart Junior, was born in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, in 1905, the third son of John and Georgina Greenfield Lockhart. My grandfather had grown up in London but, with his parents, emigrated to the …
Elections and Economics
Numbers to Deceive The unexpected result of the recent British general election set me thinking about statistics, and polls, and how (un)reliable they are - and how people love to lie. I also wondered what Steven Levitt would make of some of the numbers. For those who don't already know, Steven Levitt is a professor …
Welcome back, Lisbeth!
The Spider's Web I talk and write about books a lot, usually about books I have read. For this landmark post (it will be my 100th post on WordPress in my present incarnation), I'm going to talk about one I haven't read. In fact, it hasn't been published yet. Rumours of a new 'dragon tattoo' …
The Theory of Everything
Travelling to Infinity by Jane Hawking A few weeks ago, I went to see the award-winning James Marsh film, The Theory of Everything, with Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking and Felicity Jones as his wife, Jane. I don't know Stephen Hawking personally but have been an admirer of Hawking the scientist for a long time …
Magda Green Books 