Here are 7 books that V for Victory fans have personally recommended if you like
V for Victory.
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A wonderful, thoroughly researched and wide-ranging overview of children's literature, from early beginnings in the 17th century right up to J K Rowling and Philip Pullman today. I loved meeting many old childhood 'friends' while discovering books and authors I'd somehow missed. My only niggle is that Leith consciously omitted most (not all, so inconsistent) American authors, whose contribution to childhood literature is monumental. Think Little Women, What Katy Did and The Phantom Tollbooth, to name but a few. But overall this is a hugely enjoyable read.
*A Sunday Times, Irish Times, Financial Times, Independent, Daily Mail, TLS, Economist, Prospect, Evening Standard and New Statesman Book of the Year 2024*
Can you remember the first time you fell in love with a book?
The stories we read as children matter. The best ones are indelible in our memories; reaching far beyond our childhoods, they are a window into our deepest hopes, joys and anxieties. They reveal our past - collective and individual, remembered and imagined - and invite us to dream up different futures.
In a pioneering history of the children's literary canon, The Haunted Wood reveals…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
This is a memoir published in 1948 by someone I'd never heard of. From the title I didn't expect much. That changed when it transpired that it referred to the author's extraordinary 'can-do' approach to earning a living after escaping penniless to England from her feckless Anglo-Irish family at the age of 18. She begins by becoming an assistant to a brace of eccentric aunts, one of which, kind but utterly bonkers Aurelia, generates scenes of high comedy when she insists on joining her niece at the Slade art school and comes up against the legendary artist and teacher, Henry Tonks. 'Bricks' come into play, not metaphorically, as I imagined, but literally: Everett discovers a facility for running building projects and becomes a building contractor, designing and overseeing the structure of several family houses in the south of England, still lived in today. Female building contractors are not exactly common…
Originally published in 1949, this extraordinary memoir tells of the author's difficult upbringing in an Irish big house, where her mother brought her up on the Peerage and Anglo-Catholic theology. She was eventually rescued by an aunt and brought to England, where she studied art. Her subsequent career largely involved gardening and building, mainly in England, but also in San Martino and in a large house outside Dublin during the Irish Civil War. This book also contains fascinating descriptions of some of Everett's many friends and acquaintances, including Oscar Wilde, George Moore, Augustus John, and Rodin. Everett was somewhat nomadic,…
I’ve always loved writing comedy, since my first attempt at a joke in the school magazine. I never thought I’d get to do it professionally but somehow, through cheek and luck, I found myself as a comedy scriptwriter for the BBC, penning lines for the likes of Lenny Henry and Tracey Ullman. I’ve since gone on to have a career writing more grown-up things but nothing gave me as much pleasure as creating those lines. So I’ve returned to my comedic roots, writing comic novels. And it’s still a thrill to know I’ve written words that make people laugh.
I’m a sucker for a good title, and this one had me hooked before I read a word. But the fun doesn’t stop there with this cosy spy thriller. Reading this book left me breathless.
The pace never lets up as the hapless Dawson travels to Australia where, confused, he is chased by a colourful collection of Germans, Russians, Brits, and Aussies, all intent on getting their hands on the eponymous teapot.
I love books where the underdog finds their inner hero, and Dawson–with some help from the resourceful Lucy–is such a character. I galloped through this witty, clever book, eager to discover the secret of that teapot. I wasn’t disappointed.
Praised by comedienne Helen Lederer, founder of Comedy Women in Print Prize, who called it "A curiously magical thriller with suburban subterfuge and sparkle."
A Very Important Teapot is a comedy thriller revolving around the hunt for a lost cache of Nazi diamonds in Australia.
Dawson's life is going nowhere. Out of work and nearly out of money, he is forlornly pursuing the love of Rachel Whyte. But Rachel is engaged to Pat Bootle, an apparently successful local solicitor who has appeared from nowhere.
Then, out of the blue, Dawson receives a job offer from his best friend, Alan Flannery,…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I’ve always loved writing comedy, since my first attempt at a joke in the school magazine. I never thought I’d get to do it professionally but somehow, through cheek and luck, I found myself as a comedy scriptwriter for the BBC, penning lines for the likes of Lenny Henry and Tracey Ullman. I’ve since gone on to have a career writing more grown-up things but nothing gave me as much pleasure as creating those lines. So I’ve returned to my comedic roots, writing comic novels. And it’s still a thrill to know I’ve written words that make people laugh.
Believe me; I know how hard it is to write humour. To produce a successful comedic novel with laugh-out-loud lines as a debut novelist is no mean feat, but for me, Jane Ions has pulled it off with this book.
I found the voice of Sally Forth (I know!) engaging and hilarious from the off. There was so much for me to enjoy, from the wayward teenage son living in a lean-to in the garden to Sally’s long-suffering and respectable husband, who just happens to be an MP.
I love this kind of well-observed comedy that treats its characters, no matter how misguided, with kindness and compassion.
Sally's son Dan has come back home from college after completing his performing arts degree. He needs rent-free accommodation, friends, a love life, and somewhere to perform his arts. Sally herself is taking a career break from teaching English. She's tired of teaching year eleven pupils about the Mockingbird. She wants to kill the bird and stuff it with all the redundant apostrophe's' she's ever seen in twenty years of marking essays. She needs a rest. She does not need her adult son Dan, his current girlfriend, his previous girlfriend and his old school friend to move in and share…
I’ve always loved writing comedy, since my first attempt at a joke in the school magazine. I never thought I’d get to do it professionally but somehow, through cheek and luck, I found myself as a comedy scriptwriter for the BBC, penning lines for the likes of Lenny Henry and Tracey Ullman. I’ve since gone on to have a career writing more grown-up things but nothing gave me as much pleasure as creating those lines. So I’ve returned to my comedic roots, writing comic novels. And it’s still a thrill to know I’ve written words that make people laugh.
The on-target humour of this book helped get me through the lockdown. It is a comic novel about love, lust, and guerrilla dentistry in 1980s Leicester. How could I resist that?
I found the main character–teenager Lizzie Vogel, the guerrilla dentist in question–to be a hilarious and compelling creation, filled with the arrogance and naïveté of youth, very much in the tradition of Adrian Mole.
In fact, the book teems with entertaining, richly observed characters and absurd situations. Though there is plenty to laugh at, what impressed me most was Nina Stibbe’s gift for making her characters so real that, even while I was laughing at their antics, I felt great sympathy for them and their disappointments.
Lizzie Vogel's story continues in Reasons to be Cheerful, the brilliantly comic sequel to Nina Stibbe's hilarious books Man at the Helm and Paradise Lodge.
WINNER OF THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE FOR COMIC FICTION WINNER OF THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE
'I read all of Reasons To Be Cheerful in one glorious gulp' CAITLIN MORAN
*****
Teenager Lizzie Vogel has a new job as a dental assistant. This is not as glamorous as it sounds.
At least it means mostly getting away from her alcoholic, nymphomaniacal, novel-writing mother. But, if Lizzie thinks being independent means sex with her…
I’ve always loved writing comedy, since my first attempt at a joke in the school magazine. I never thought I’d get to do it professionally but somehow, through cheek and luck, I found myself as a comedy scriptwriter for the BBC, penning lines for the likes of Lenny Henry and Tracey Ullman. I’ve since gone on to have a career writing more grown-up things but nothing gave me as much pleasure as creating those lines. So I’ve returned to my comedic roots, writing comic novels. And it’s still a thrill to know I’ve written words that make people laugh.
I’ll never understand why humorous writing is less respected than the more literary kind. Yet, I believe creating characters that are both convincing and amusing and steering them through a complicated plot–without letting the humour flag–takes great skill. For me, this is what the author Stevyn Colgan achieves in his South Herewardshire books, the first of which is A Murder to Die For.
I found the laughs just kept on coming as farce piled upon farce. As well as giving me a good chuckle, I relished the rural setting, a touching reminder of the splendors and eccentricities of English village life that I, for one, would be sad to lose.
When hordes of people descend on the picturesque village of Nasely for the annual celebration of its most famous resident, murder mystery writer Agnes Crabbe, events take a dark turn as the festival opens with a shocking death. Each year the residents are outnumbered by crowds dressed as Crabbe's best-known character, the lady detective Millicent Cutter.
The weekend is never a mild-mannered affair as fan club rivalries bubble below the surface, but tensions reach new heights when a second Crabbe devotee is found murdered. Though the police are quick to arrive on the scene, the facts are tricky to ascertain…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’ve always loved writing comedy, since my first attempt at a joke in the school magazine. I never thought I’d get to do it professionally but somehow, through cheek and luck, I found myself as a comedy scriptwriter for the BBC, penning lines for the likes of Lenny Henry and Tracey Ullman. I’ve since gone on to have a career writing more grown-up things but nothing gave me as much pleasure as creating those lines. So I’ve returned to my comedic roots, writing comic novels. And it’s still a thrill to know I’ve written words that make people laugh.
A confession: Lissa Evans is one of my very favourite authors. I’ve greatly enjoyed all her books, and this one is a brilliant example. It’s crammed full of likeable and fallible characters–as well as some equally believable horrors–attempting to deal with the ridiculousness of life.
Reading it, I felt I was never far away from a good laugh, either a chuckle-worthy turn of phrase or a riotous set piece. Yet, along with escaped city pigs, procreating giant snails, and porno-mag chomping tortoises, I loved that there is poignancy and even tragedy. So much so I found myself late at night worrying for the fate of some of her characters.
Spencer, Fran and Iris have something in common: the feeling that life is passing them by. Spencer's lost his lover, who bequeathed him a list of things to do; Fran shares a run-down house with her oddball brother; whilst Iris spends her time cleaning up after her two teenage sons...
SPENCER'S LIST is a wonderfully funny tale of life lived on the edge - of reason, of failure and of (just possibly) a brighter future.
