Author name: Scott

A beautifully written study in melancholy set in a Swiss hotel by a lake. Edith Hope has gone to regain her composure on the advice of friends after an affair. Full of sly humour and rendered in delicate prose, this is a gently entertaining read for which Brookner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Brookner) won the Booker Prize of 1984. Anita […]

In the dying days of the Ottoman Empire in 1908 Basil Pascali is a spy who reports regularly to Istanbul on the activities of the local people on his Aegean island. His reports are never acknowledged or seemingly acted upon, although his regular payment continues to come through. He expects to be found out at any

Packed with detail and displaying an evident love of the subject Melvyn Bragg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvyn_Bragg) gives us the story of the Christianization of the North of England in the seventh century. The book shines a fictional light onto the warring, pagan Dark Ages. An outstanding blend of passion and erudition. Melvyn Bragg 800 pages in Sceptre

‘Ad majorem Dei Gloriam’ – ‘To the greater glory of God’ is the motto of the Society of Jesus. It can also be understood as the aim of constructing all the buildings and creative works of art which are really hymns in stone, word and music to the divine. Golding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) gives us Dean Jocelin who determines

Raphael (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Raphael) presents a sample of the generation who went to Cambridge in the 1950s and their subsequent careers. Incredibly witty with beautifully realised characters this is a pure pleasure of a read. The six part 1976 TV mini series, from which the book was adapted, (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073999/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm) is with Tom Conti, Barbara Kellerman, Leonard Sachs and Nigel

Regeneration (1991) is the first of the award winning trilogy of the same name. Pat Barker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Barker) gets into the heads of the young men who were forced to endure the horrors of the First World War. It was followed by The Eye in the Door (1993) and The Ghost Road (1995). It mixes fictional characters

Originally published as Le Noeud de Vipiers in 1932. A rich but wretchedly unhappy miser approaches the end of his life, and tries in a series of reflections to figure out how it has all gone wrong. Suffocating in his own avarice and bitterness, is there anything that can be done to save this lost