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- Across America by Greyhound Bus – 1970
- Reading Bruegel
- The Tangled Tale of the Mixed-Up Mice
- Fons Americanus – Art For This Time
- On My Bookshelf – The Singing Game
- Hidden Lives in Victorian England
- Update: The Return of the Knife
- The Prostitutes’ Graveyard
- London in the Plague Year
- On Memory and Churchill’s Funeral
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Tag Archives: England
Fons Americanus – Art For This Time
The events of the past several weeks, the death of George Floyd under the knee of a police officer, the protests that swept the nation and the world, and President Trump’s attempt at brutal “domination” brought to mind an art … Continue reading
On My Bookshelf – The Singing Game
Perhaps it was the restlessness induced by quarantine that had me prowling my own bookshelves in search of diversion. I needed a break from the world of Thomas Cromwell in Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light. (I know it … Continue reading
Hidden Lives in Victorian England
In my final blog for MCPL (my former professional home Montgomery County Public Libraries, Maryland) I discuss The Five, a book about the victims of Jack the Ripper, a wonderful piece of social history that restores dignity to the five women. Other titles … Continue reading
London in the Plague Year
One day last week we stood in London’s Bunhill Fields burial ground before the grave of Daniel Defoe. Of course his Journal of the Plague Year was the book that came to mind. Based on eyewitness reports in his uncle’s … Continue reading
On Memory and Churchill’s Funeral
When I was very small my Uncle Lievin saved me from a bear. I was in bed at my grandmother’s house in Belgium when he came running up the stairs chased by a bear. Don’t worry, he assured me, I’ll … Continue reading
Regency Isn’t Just Romance
My latest blog for Montgomery County Public Libraries is about the Regency years in England, a decade that compares to the 1960’s, a time of radical politics, war, social change, and literary experimentation. In other parallels, the 1812 assassination of Prime … Continue reading
Tales of the Asylum
One day in the early 1960’s I came home to find that while I was in school my grandmother had been whisked away in an ambulance and taken to a mental hospital. The news followed several unsettling days, days of … Continue reading
On My Bookshelf – Witchfinders
Witchfinders – no, not characters in our contemporary political drama. But it could be that hearing cries of “Witch Hunt” almost every day for two years was what led me to this particular book on my shelf. Witchfinders by Malcolm … Continue reading
A Good Guy With A Narwhal Tusk
According to Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.” But in London on November 29th a bad guy with a knife … Continue reading →