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A Grumpy Old Man with an Unusual Job
I have found myself a new role – as a volunteer in a charity bookshop, which is about as perfect as things can get. I was browsing there a couple of weeks ago and suddenly realised the lady behind the counter was an old friend I hadn’t seen for many years, and the next thing…
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Radio, Poetry – and Christmas!
Forget Christmas for a moment, and consider instead the lovely bookish week that lies ahead on BBC Radio. There are some real treats in store on Radio 4, starting with Mark Forsyth’s The Etymologicon, which is being featured on Book of the Week. This takes a look at the hidden connections between words and is on my To Be Read list,…
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Journey of the Magi
I seem to be all behind hand with the Advent Bookfest. having missed day yesterday, but I have a poem for you today – TS Eliot’s Journey of the Magi, and if you go to http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=7070 you can hear him reciting it on an old and rather crackly radio recording. I love the way Eliot makes the…
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Christmas Comfort with Mr Pickwick
Christmas Eve at Mr Wardle’s, byHablot Knight Browne,known as Phiz. How can I have got this far through December without mentioning Charles Dickens? Dickens loved Christmas, and as the 200th anniversary of his birth approaches our image of the traditional, family festival is still shaped by his writings. So here’s a passage from The Pickwick…
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Shakespeare and Company
I was going to post a piece about about Dickens for my Advent Bookfest, but instead here’s a small tribute to George Whitman, owner of the legendary Shakespeare and Company, who has died at the age of 98. Here’s a picture of the bookshop that I took when my mother and I visited Paris earlier…
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The Book Trunk 