January 2018

My Christmas/New Year reads were an interesting mix. We stayed with relatives in Brighton and I finished Robert Harris’s “Conclave” (about selection of a new Pope) on Christmas Eve, a few hours before some of our party braved the chilly evening air to walk to the huge St Bartholomew’s Church for midnight mass. Lots of scarlet and gold robes, excellent choir and orchestra with Mozart’s Mass in F and a very large congregation (I mean a considerable number of us, not that we’d already stuffed ourselves with too much food). Then, one could argue on a similar theme, I read Malyn Bromfield’s “Mayflowers for November” a fresh take on Anne Boleyn’s rise and fall told through the eyes of a servant. After that it was Tracy Chevalier’s “New Boy”, a modern take on Othello set in a US elementary school. Finally I’ve just finished Helen Dunmore’s last book, “Birdcage Walk”, set in Bristol at the time of the French Revolution, when it did not do to be a radical, and when many building projects ground to a halt, including Royal York Crescent, where I lived as a student 50 years ago in a pre-gentrified basement flat. All different but all worth a read. Wishing you all HAPPY READING 2018!