The Life of Thomas More

(by Peter Ackroyd) Highly readable and balanced life (and death) of the contentious, hair-shirted and many faceted ‘man for all seasons’ (omnium horarum). Beatified but no saint, an intolerant believer and a survivor who sacrificed himself on principle, he remains an enigma and a controversial one. This book comes close to doing justice to all sides and all sides of the man and one can’t do much better than that.

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The Children’s Hospital

(C. Adrian) O you lovely book!  From the first, gasping, rolling hurtling minutes, through the green fire and the black death to the final sad biblical parade, I love all of your pages.

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The Browning Version

(Terence Rattigan) Rattigan liked to focus on the pitiless pitied; still, he had a great (though now out of fashion) talent for structure, style, character and conventional exposition. It is what makes his plays so enjoyable. Andrew Crocker-Harris is Mr Chipping without the charm, Mr Kotter without the humour and Miss Brodie without the balls. He has been played by Eric Portman, Michael Redgrave, Albert Finney and others but few have got his essential character entirely right (NB the Varnished Culture never saw Portman in the role). After all, the impression he gives is that of only mild surprise at…

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The Masters

(by C. P. Snow) Snow wrote about what he knew: machinations at Oxbridge and Westminster. This one, the 4th in a loose sequence of 9 novels known as Strangers and Brothers, is perhaps the best, a somewhat pompous but intriguing deconstruction of a college election which humanises the Dons and explains the politics.  

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Provence and the Côte D’Azur

(by J McCulloch) The South of France may have slipped down the rankings of getaways for the great and good but it is still a superb region in which to luxuriate. This beautiful guide is not only packed with information; it is packed with the right information, first-hand and canny and laced with photos that are almost better than being there.  

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