by Nicole Gonzalez Lovely balance Andrew Neil. The open neck and rolled up sleeves tell us this is a relaxed, informal Andrew but the books remind us he is never really off the clock. It’s like Magnus Carlsen playing Ludo.…
by Daniel Cook Still revered as one of the world’s great historical novelists, Sir Walter Scott kept coming back to the supernatural, the eerie, and the macabre. Some of the novels even include extractable tales of terror: ‘The Fortunes of…
By Laura McCormick Kilbride, Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft, and Simone Kotva Is reading a theological activity? This is a question which only invites further questions. How a person responds to it will reveal as much about their presuppositions and their training…
William Sharp evokes ‘those wild Breton coasts of the Tréguier headland’ with the ‘grey, muttering waste’ of the sea. Little did I realise, when I must have read these phrases at the age of 14 on a cliff overlooking the north end of the village of Fairlie, in Ayrshire, Scotland that years later I would be living in that self-same area.
by Geoffrey Marsh Wednesday 31 December 1600 is one of the pivotal dates in English history. It was not only the end of the 16th century but the day Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter to 215 London merchants for…
by Jürgen Pieters The painting on my new book’s cover was made by the Viennese artist Friedrich Frotzel (1898-1971). Its title – ‘The Old Bookcase’ – makes it even more appropriate. The library of comfort, as I make clear in…
by Geoffrey Marsh Who were the most interesting ‘neighbours’ of that Living with Shakespeare explores? I tried to follow up on all of the hundred or so families that made up the parish of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate in the 1590s.…
by Adam Hansen I got a post-‘lockdown #3’ haircut in my Tyneside town recently, to my relief, and everyone else’s. (You know things are getting desperate when 90% of what anyone sees onscreen in a Zoom call is not your…
by Geoffrey Marsh Given that there is little information about Shakespeare’s life, people ask what made me think there was enough to write another book. The short answer is I didn’t. While I would like to claim that Living with…