I learnt about Burne-Jones' art and the other artists and writers around him including Rossetti, Morris, Ruskin. I enjoy Penelope Fitzgerald's novels and was intrigued to read a biography by her.
Penelope Fitzgerald, the Booker Prize-winning author of 'Offshore' and 'The Blue Flower', turns her attention to the remarkable life of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones.
'I mean by a picture a beautiful, romantic dream of something that never was, never will be, in a light better than any light that ever shone - in a land no one can define or remember, only desire' Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) was the prototypical pre-Raphaelite but with a truly individual sensibility. Penelope Fitzgerald's delightful biography charts his life from humble beginnings in Birmingham as the son of an unsuccessful framer, through a…
It was an extraordinary use of the stream of consciousness style. The story of a Glaswegian drunk took us to great depths of humanity, demonstrating the value of everyone.
One Sunday morning in Glasgow, shoplifting ex-con Sammy awakens in an alley, wearing another man's shoes and trying to remember his two-day drinking binge. He gets in a scrap with some soldiers and revives in a jail cell, badly beaten and, he slowly discovers, completely blind. And things get worse: his girlfriend disappears, the police question him for a crime they won't name, and his stab at disability compensation embroils him in the Kafkaesque red tape of the welfare bureaucracy. Told in the utterly uncensored language of the Scottish working class, this is a dark and subtly political parable of…
The fourth book in Dorothy L Sayers' classic Lord Peter Wimsey series, introduced by detective fiction writer Simon Brett - a must-read for fans of Agatha Christie's Poirot and Margery Allingham's Campion Mysteries.
'D. L. Sayers is one of the best detective story writers' Daily Telegraph
Lord Peter Wimsey bent down over General Fentiman and drew the Morning Post gently away from the gnarled old hands. Then, with a quick jerk, he lifted the quiet figure. It came up all of a piece, stiff as a wooden doll . . .
1093. The music of murder. Beatriz de Farrera is a trobairitz (a female troubadour) at the court of Toulouse. She sings of love but intends to evade marriage and romantic entanglements. Her patron, Lady Philippa, is the heiress of the rich city and county of Toulouse. Philippa’s uncle Raymond plans to sweep her out of his way and usurp her rights. In a world of scheming lords and plotting abbots seeking to control the riches of local salt production and the pilgrim routes, a brutal murder occurs. Beatriz must uncover the secrets lurking beneath the surface of the Toulouse court to avert a great injustice.
