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All posts by Julia
I am a volunteer at Kent County Archives. I enjoy books with a sense of place, and the Reading Detectives scheme is already opening up some fascinating new paths for me to explore .....
Pangbourne - a love affair with a gorilla Find!
28 February 2010 Sharply observed human nature, elegantly and concisely expressed, the short stories in Jane Gardam's The People on Privilege Hill are a delight to read. The setting for one of them, Pangbourne, is a zoo-park (Howletts Wild Animal Park?), not mentioned by... Read more or Comment
Poetry dropping in Sandwich
23 February 2010 Back in October, Helen, a member of the Cumbrian Reading Detectives team, wrote an interesting blog which drew our attention to The Embalmer's Book of Recipes by Ann Lingard. In her blog, Helen quoted Jane Gardam, and Rob pointed out that... Read more or Comment
Out of the Blue - continued
2 December 2009 This book proved to be a compelling read. It tells the story of a teenage girl living in rural Kent during World War 2. Kitty Danby and her brother have been uprooted from London during the Blitz, and are living... Read more or Comment
Out of the Blue by Val Rutt Find!
22 November 2009 Out of the Blue is a story of first love in wartime Kent. It is a fictional story, with imagined characters, but inspired by an actual event in June 1944, when a V1 flying bomb was shot down and exploded on... Read more or Comment
Grubby Tales from Beardy Ardagh Find!
12 November 2009 I can't resist a mention for Philip Ardagh's Grubtown Tales: Stinking Rich and Just Plain Stinky, which has just won the Roald Dahl Funny Prize in the 7-14 years category. Philip Ardagh (aka Beardy Ardagh) divides his time between Tunbridge Wells and the... Read more or Comment
The Curse of Aphis Minimus Find!
16 October 2009 Lively, witty and packed with highly relevant topical comment, despite being written 60 years ago, the novel Not on our Stars by Edward Hyams is a compelling read. The book tells the story of a young scientist, Edgar Appleton, who has... Read more or Comment (1 comments)
From Maidstone Prison to the Wide Sargasso Sea! Find!
11 October 2009 An article in this week's Kent Messenger* has alerted us to evidence that a former Maidstone pub may have been the birthplace of Jean Rhys' award winning book The Wide Sargasso Sea! Jean Rhys took many years to write The Wide Sargasso Sea, which was... Read more or Comment (8 comments)
The Tramping Methodist - more tramping in Kent! Find!
4 October 2009 After a follower on the BBC Radio Kent website drew our attention to the author Sheila Kaye-Smith, another literary search was set in motion. I confess I had not heard of Kaye-Smith before, but was intrigued to find out more.... Read more or Comment (1 comments)
The Small Years by Frank Kendon Find!
4 October 2009 The Small Years is a clear, straightforward, and beautifully expressed account of Frank Kendon's memories of his early childhood in rural Kent. He was born in 1893, and grew up in a school founded by his grandfather, in a small... Read more or Comment
From Country Pursuits to the Western Front Find!
27 September 2009 Perhaps because the anti-war sentiments of the 'war poets' are so strong, their other writing is sometimes overlooked. I was not aware before of Siegfried Sassoon's fictionalised autobiography, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston, nor did I know that Sassoon grew... Read more or Comment
Edmund Blunden - echoes from Yalding church bells Find!
27 September 2009 Browsing along the poetry shelves in the Centre for Kentish Studies, I found several books with poems by Edmund Blunden, who, I discovered, spent much of his childhood in the village of Yalding. Throughout his life he maintained a deep... Read more or Comment (1 comments)
More from the tramps ..... Find!
23 September 2009 By complete surprise, One Green Field by Edward Thomas dropped out of my newspaper on Saturday. I found this a delight to read, and definitely a find for me, as I had not read any of Thomas's prose before. It is an acutely... Read more or Comment
Finds
- Pangbourne - a love affair with a gorilla
- Out of the Blue by Val Rutt
- Grubby Tales from Beardy Ardagh
- The Curse of Aphis Minimus
- From Maidstone Prison to the Wide Sargasso Sea!
- The Tramping Methodist - more tramping in Kent!
- The Small Years by Frank Kendon
- From Country Pursuits to the Western Front
- Edmund Blunden - echoes from Yalding church bells
- More from the tramps .....
Recent posts
- Poetry dropping in Sandwich
- Reading Detectives film
- Out of the Blue - continued
- Denton Welch
- 45 London Road Sevenoaks
- To Penshurst
- Kent Finale!
- Mon 21 Sep 10.30 am DETECTIVE EVENT AT CENTRE FOR KENTISH STUDIES, MAIDSTONE
- Cat Lovers
- W H Davies
- Silence on the home front as my hard drive has died
- Jeffery Farnol
- Denton Welch, a look back to simpler times
- What Jane Austen really looked like !
- Life in the Country: With Quotations by Jane Austen and Silhouettes by Her Nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh
- First Meeting for Kent
- Jane Austen - Monster Mash Up
- Launch of Kent's Reading Detectives Team on 12 August
- Jane Austen Heritage Link
- Reading Detectives are starting soon in Kent
Help the team
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