LITERARY BENT – Writing at its best

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

A nameless, burned man (the ‘English’ patient) lies in an upstairs room in an Italian villa towards the end of the Second World War. He is tended by a Canadian nurse, Hana. Through his flashback memories we learn of a passionate love affair, betrayal and tragedy in North Africa as the gigantic forces of conflict intersect with

Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with

This novel tells the story of Oscar Hopkins, the Cornish son of a Plymouth Brethren minister who becomes an Anglican priest, and Lucinda Leplastrier, a young Australian heiress who buys a glass factory. They meet on the ship over to Australia, and discover that they are both gamblers, one obsessive the other compulsive. Lucinda bets Oscar that he cannot