It wasn’t the best title. In the bleak days of World War One, the last thing the public needed was a book entitled The Saddest Story. Ford’s publisher urged a more tactful approach, to […]
Classic of the Week: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
‘”I fail to see how you work it out”… “It is simplicity itself” said he’ Whether you are a Benedict Cumberbatch or a Robert Downey, Jr. fan, you will love this book. The Adventures of […]
Classic of the Week: New Grub Street by George Gissing
‘To write – was not that the joy and the privilege of one who had an urgent message for the world?’ Well this is an inspiring tale for us young journos. New Grub Street […]
Books: Classic of the Week – The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
‘Everybody is clever nowadays… The thing has become a public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left’ Callie White gives a little nod towards the opening of The Merry Wives of […]
Books: Halloween Classic of the Week: Trilby by George Du Maurier
Now this is a novel soaked with cultural history. Trilby inspired Leroux’s The Phantom of The Opera, coined the term Svengali, now forever to denote a hypnotic and controlling young gentleman, and turned the […]
Classic of the week: Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant
Peter Perkins reviews 19th century Parisian skulduggery in this week’s Classic of the Week. Guy de Maupassant was perhaps better known in his country as a waiter and short story writer, but here he […]
Classic of the Week: The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky
‘The whole casino was crowding around… I experienced some sort of irresistible pleasure in snatching and raking in the banknotes… The experienced player knows what this ‘capricious luck’ means.’ Capriciousness is one of the […]
Classic of the Week: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
‘They lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented’: Lottie Brown is thrown into the conventions of 70s New York society […]
Classic of the Week: The Rivals by Robert Brinsley Sheridan
Especially for freshers’, Lucy Holden puts a modern twist on a wonderfully comic classic. A fine treat for you Freshers is this raucous eighteenth-century comedy of lies, disguise and the inevitable romance. Not unlike your […]