Friday, 27 October 2023
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Even if money were no object, I'm afraid I'm too clumsy to be trusted with anything like this - but isn't this Lucie Rie bowl simply beautiful?
But wouldn't you just love to own a collection of her wartime buttons? I'd have to learn to knit!
Happened on this exhibition as I was walking in Berkeley Square this afternoon.
I'm reading
- Long Live Great Bardfield:The Autobiography of Tirzah Garfield
- Worktown (David Hall)
Exhibitions 2024
- Frans Hals (National Gallery)
- The Crown Auction (Bonhams)
- Entangled Pasts, 1768-now (Royal Academy)
- The Glass Heart, Art, Industry & Collaboration (Two Temple Place)
- Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind (Tate Modern)
- Sargent and Fashion (Tate Britain)
- Angelica Kauffman (Royal Academy)
- Pasquarosa: From Muse to Painter (Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art)
- Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In (National Portrait Gallery)
- Angie Lewin, Patterns of Nature (Watts Gallery)
- The Biba Story, 1964-1975 (Fashion and Textile Museum)
- Fashion City (Museum of London Docklands)
- Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider (Tate Modern)
- Shuvinai Ashoona: When I Draw (The Perimeter)
- Saul Leiter: An Unfinished World (MK Gallery)
- Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520-1920 (Tate Britain)
- Sargent and Fashion (revisited)
- Summer Exhibition (Royal Academy)
- Six Wives: The Stories of Henry VIII's Queens (National Portrait Gallery)
- Vivienne Westwood: The Personal Collection (Christie's)
- In the Eye of the Storm, Modernism in Ukraine 1900-1930s (Royal Academy)
- Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award 2024 (National Portrait Gallery)
- Edward Bawden & Me (The Higgins, Bedford)
- Grayson Perry: The Vanity of Small Differences (Pitzhanger Manor)
- Michael Craig-Martin (Royal Academy)
- Scottish Art (Portland Gallery)
- Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers (National Gallery)
- Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look (National Gallery)
- Francis Bacon: Human Presence (National Portrait Gallery)
- Out Shopping: The Dresses of Marion and Maud Sambourne (1880-1910) (Leighton House)
- Looks Delicious! Exploring Japan's food replica culture (Japan House)
- Lost Gardens of London (Garden Museum)
- Lucienne Day Silk Mosaics, 1975-1993 (Margaret Howell)
- Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2024 (National Portrait Gallery)
- The Private Collection of Mary and Alan Hobart- Pioneers of Modern British and Irish Art (Christie's)
- Radical Modernity: From Bloomsbury to Charleston (Sotheby's)
- The 80s: Photographing Britain (Tate Britain)
- Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet (Tate Modern)
- Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious (Dulwich Picture Gallery)
Theatre 2024
- Giselle (English National Ballet, Coliseum)
- Cecil Beaton's Diaries (OSO Arts Centre)
- La Strada (Sadler's Wells)
- You Can't Take It With You (Questors)
- Havisham (Questors)
- The Barber of Seville (Coliseum)
- Dear Octopus (Lyttelton)
- Jenufa (Coliseum)
- The Good Father (Riverside Studios)
- Duke Bluebeard's Castle (Coliseum)
- Lettice & Lovage (Ambassadors)
- Carmen (English National Ballet, Sadler's Wells)
- Power of Sail (Menier Chocolate Factory)
- The Glass Menagerie (Rose Theatre, Kingston)
- Nye (Olivier)
- Spirited Away (Coliseum)
- Twelfth Night (Regent's Park Open Air Theatre)
- London Tide (Lyttelton)
- The Secret Garden (Regent's Park Open Air Theatre)
- A Midsummer Night's Dream (Walled Garden, Boston Manor Park)
- The Hot Wing King (Dorfman)
- Madwomen of the West (Riverside Studios)
- The Grapes of Wrath (Lyttelton)
- Pride and Prejudice (Jermyn Street Theatre)
- Death of England: Michael (@SohoPlace)
- The Lightest Element (Hampstead Theatre)
- Our Country's Good (Lyric, Hammersmith)
- Never Let Me Go (Rose Theatre, Kingston)
- La Bohéme (Coliseum)
- Beryl Cook: A Private View (Finborough Theatre)
- Frankenstein (Boston Manor)
- The Buddha of Suburbia (RSC Barbican)
- The Elixir of Love (Coliseum)
- Twelfth Night (Orange Tree Theatre)
- The Pirates of Penzance (Coliseum)
- A Christmas Tale (Boston Manor)
- Lies Where It Falls (Finborough Theatre)
Films 2024
- One Life
- The Boys in the Boat
- The End We Start From
- The Color Purple
- Iron Claw
- All Of Us Strangers
- The Taste of Things
- Wicked Little Letters
- Neruda
- Freud's Last Session
- There's Still Tomorrow
- The Dead Don't Hurt
- Áma Gloria
- Widow Clicquot
- The Commandant's Shadow
- Fly Me to the Moon
- Thelma
- Jackpot
- Kneecap
- Blink Twice
- The Queen of My Dreams
- NT Live: Prima Facie
- My Favourite Cake
- Lee
- Small Things Like These
- Layla
- Paddington in Peru
- Joy
Books read 2024
- The Secret Hours (Mick Herron)
- So Late in the Day (Claire Keegan)
- Black faces, White Faces (Jane Gardam)
- The Fraud (Zadie Smith)
- Black Money (Ross Macdonald)
- Charlotte (David Foenkinos)
- Ways of Life: Jim Ede and the Kettle's Yard Artists (Laura Freeman)
- Last Waltz in Vienna (George Clare)
- The Trees (Percival Everett)
- Evelyn Dunbar, War and Country (Gill Clarke)
- Le Divorce (Diane Johnson)
- Six Poets: Hardy to Larkin (Alan Bennett)
- Afternoon of a Good Woman (Nina Bawden)
- A Man Without a Country (Kurt Vonnegut)
- Hitler, Stalin, Mum & Dad (Daniel Finkelstein)
- The Ratline (Philippe Sands)
- Old God's Time (Sebastian Barry)
- Bring No Clothes, Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion (Charlie Porter)
- Monsieur Ka (Vesna Goldsworthy)
- This Other Eden (Paul Harding)
- Sheeps' Clothing (Celia Dale)
- The Rachel Incident (Caroline O'Donoghue)
- Such a Fun Age (Kiley Reid)
- In Memoriam (Alice Winn)
- The Winds of Heaven (Monica Dickens)
- Out of the Window (Madeline Linford)
- Come and Get It (Kiley Reid)
- Good Taste (Caroline Scott)
- The Button Box (Lynn Knight)
- The Appointment (Katharina Volckmer)
- High Wages (Dorothy Whipple)
- This is Happiness (Niall Williams)
- Antarctica (Claire Keegan)
- An Everlasting Meal (Tamar Adler)
- Have His Carcase (Dorothy L Sayers)
- The Huntingfield Paintress (Pamela Holmes)
- The Seeker (SG MacLean)
- A Kind Man (Susan Hill)
- The Oaken Heart (Margery Allingham)
- A Glass of Blessings (Barbara Pym)
- Sofia Petrovna (Lydia Chukovskaya)
- The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Giorgio Bassani)
- Second Act (Henry Oliver)
- Crow Lake (Mary Lawson)
- Funny Story (Emily Henry)
- Red Dust (Gillian Slovo)
- Lord Jim at Home (Dinah Brooke)
- Jane Austen the Secret Radical (Helena Kelly)
- Station Eleven (Emily St John Mandel)
- The Franchise Affair (Josephine Tey)
- The Children's Bach (Helen Garner)
- Anna of the Five Towns (Arnold Bennett)
- The Ministry of Time (Kaliane Bradley)
- The Second Sleep (Robert Harris)
- Long Island (Colm Tóibín)
- Someone at a Distance (Dorothy Whipple)
Exhibitions 2023
- Kaffe Fassett: The Power of Pattern (Fashion & Textile Museum)
- Spain and the Hispanic World (Royal Academy)
- Chris Killip, retrospective (Photographers' Gallery)
- Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance (V&A)
- Art on Paper since 1960: the Hamish Parker collection (British Museum)
- Artists and Neighbours: The Holland Park Circle (Leighton House)
- Anthony Caro: The Inspiration of Architecture (Pitzhanger Manor)
- Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American South (Royal Academy)
- After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art (National Gallery)
- The Rossettis (Tate Britain)
- Emily Patrick (Gallery 8)
- Everyday Stories: Paula Rego 1970s (Casa das Historias Paula Rego)
- Paula Rego and Salette Tavares (Casa das Historias Paula Rego)
- War Games (Imperial War Museum)
- The Paradisical Pictures (The Gilbert & George Centre)
- Styled by Design: Modern Artist Textiles (Gray MCA)
- Summer Exhibition (Royal Academy)
- Capturing the Moment (Tate Modern)
- Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life (Tate Modern)
- Chelsea Physic Garden: Celebrating 350 Years in Paint and Print (Bankside Gallery)
- Andy Warhol: The Textiles (Fashion & Textile Museum)
- Saint Francis of Assisi (National Gallery)
- Yevonde: Life and Colour (National Portrait Gallery)
- Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm (National Portrait Gallery)
- Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impressionism (Dulwich Picture Gallery)
- Mary Beale: Experimental Secrets (Dulwich Picture Gallery)
- Japanese Aesthetics of Recycling (Brunei Gallery)
- Brian Clarke: A Great Light (Newport Street Gallery)
- Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto (V&A)
- Lagos, Peckham, Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes (South London Gallery)
- Sarah Sze (The Waiting Room, Peckham Rye)
- The Italian Effect (Italian Cultural Institute)
- Lucie Rie and Hans Coper, Exceptional Ceramics (Phillips)
- David Hockney: Drawing from Life (National Portrait Gallery)
- An Edible Family in a Mobile Home (Tate Britain)
- Women in Revolt! (Tate Britain)
- Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2023 (National Portrait Gallery)
- Impressionists on paper: Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec (Royal Academy)
- Pesellino: A Renaissance Master Revealed (National Gallery)
- Liotard & The Lavergne Family Breakfast (National Gallery)
Theatre 2023
- Little Dorrit (Questors)
- Phaedra (Lyttelton)
- Charlotte and Theodore (Richmond Theatre)
- The Gut Girls (Questors)
- Home, I'm Darling (Richmond Theatre)
- Quality Street (Richmond Theatre)
- Richard III (Rose Theatre, KIngston)
- Dixon and Daughters (Dorfman)
- The Circle (Orange Tree Theatre)
- Wuthering Heights (Rose Theatre, Kingston)
- Yours Unfaithfully (Jermyn Street Theatre)
- All of It (Royal Court)
- Frank and Percy (Theatre Royal, Windsor)
- The Motive and the Cue (Lyttelton)
- When Winston Went to War with the Wireless (Donmar Warehouse)
- The Wind and the Rain (Finborough Theatre)
- Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Theatre Royal Haymarket)
- After All These Years (Jermyn Street Theatre)
- Spiral (Jermyn Street Theatre)
- The Way Old Friends Do (Criterion Theatre)
- The Effect (Lyttelton)
- Hancock's Half Hour: The Lost Episodes (Jermyn Street Theatre)
- Guys & Dolls (Bridge Theatre)
- Birthright (Finborough Theatre)
- The Father and the Assassin (Olivier)
- Death of England: Closing Time (Dorfman)
- Sheila's Island (Questors)
- Iolanthe (Coliseum)
- La Traviata (Coliseum)
- The Confessions (Lyttelton)
- Albion (Questors)
- Nutcracker (Tuff Nutt Jazz Club, Southbank Centre)
- The Rehearsal (Questors)
- She Stoops to Conquer (Orange Tree Theatre)
- A Christmas Carol (Boston Manor House)
- Infinite Life (Dorfman)
Films 2023
- Empire of Light
- Au Revoir le Bonheur
- Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
- Plan 75
- Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition
- A Plein Temps (Full Time)
- No Hard Feelings
- Oppenheimer
- The Innocent
- Wonka
Books read 2023
- The Plant Kingdoms of Charles Jones (Sean Sexton & Robert Flynn Johnson)
- The Lost Pianos of Siberia (Sophy Roberts)
- Actress (Anne Enright)
- Félicie (Georges Simenon)
- Self-portrait (Celia Paul)
- Four Thousand Weeks (Oliver Burkeman)
- A Ladder to the Sky (John Boyne)
- The Man from Everywhere (Georges Simenon)
- A Touch of Mistletoe (Barbara Comyns)
- Quartet in Autumn (Barbara Pym)
- The Maidens (Alex Michaelides)
- Newhaven-Dieppe (Georges Simenon)
- Letters to Gwen John (Celia Paul)
- Lessons in Chemistry (Bonnie Garmus)
- Foster (Claire Keegan)
- And So Did I (Malachi Whitaker)
- The Two Mrs Abbotts (DE Stevenson)
- Strange Journey (Maud Cairnes)
- Happy-Go-Lucky (David Sedaris)
- Clock Dance (Anne Tyler)
- My Phantoms (Gwendoline Riley)
- Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Thurston)
- A Pin to See the Peepshow (F Tennyson Jesse)
- Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea (Barbara Demick)
- A Man's Place (Annie Ernaux)
- The Last Green Valley (Mark Sullivan)
- My Father's House (Joseph O'Connor)
- Rag Rugs of Britain and America (Emma Tennant)
- Mary Wollstonecraft (Madeline Linford)
- Standard Deviation (Katherine Heiny)
- The Crossing Places (Elly Griffiths)
- A Visible Man (Edward Enninful)
- Pachinko (Min Jin Lee)
- Larchfield (Polly Clark)
- Trespasses (Louise Kennedy)
- Shout! The True Story of the Beatles (Philip Norman)
- Maud Martha (Gwendolyn Brooks)
- Hag-Seed (Margaret Atwood)
- Best of Friends (Kamila Shamsie)
- Mrs Caliban (Rachel Ingalls)
- The Hired Girl (Laura Amy Schlitz)
- Saplings (Noel Streatfeild)
- Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe)
- The Trials of Topsy (AP Herbert)
- They (Kay Dick)
- Two Storm Wood (Philip Gray)
- Darling (India Knight)
- I'll Be With You in the Squeezing of a Lemon (Elizabeth David)
- Maigret's Revolver (Georges Simenon)
- The Beautiful Summer (Cesare Pavese)
- The Children Who Lived in a Barn (Eleanor Graham)
- The Street (Ann Petry)
- Get Ready For Battle (Ruth Prawer Jhabvala)
- Carl and Karin Larsson, Creators of the Swedish Style (ed. Michael Snodin and Elisabet Stavenow-Hidemark)
- Earthly Joys (Philippa Gregory)
- Pineapple Street (Jenny Jackson)
- Small Things Like These (Claire Keegan)
- Summerwater (Sarah Moss)
- O Caledonia (Elspeth Barker)
- The Ballad of Peckham Rye (Muriel Spark)
- Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Gabrielle Zevin)
- Tom Lake (Ann Patchett)
- Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Tales from the Cafe (Toshikazu Kawaguchi)
- Death at La Fenice (Donna Leon)
- The True Deceiver (Tove Jansson)
- Romantic Comedy (Curtis Sittenfeld)
- The Bookbinder of Jericho (Pip Williams)
- As It Was ...World Without End (Helen Thomas)
Exhibitions 2022
- Francis Bacon: Man and Beast (Royal Academy)
- Body Vessel Clay (Two Temple Place)
- Surrealism Beyond Borders (Tate Modern)
- The Broderers' Exhibition:The Art of Embroidery (Bankside Gallery)
- Whistler's Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan (Royal Academy)
- Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature (V&A)
- Kyōsai: The Israel Goldman Collection (Royal Academy)
- Wild & Cultivated: Fashioning the Rose (Garden Museum)
- Gainsborough's Blue Boy (National Gallery)
- Virtual Veronese (National Gallery)
- Fashioning Masculinities: the Art of Menswear (V&A)
- Walter Sickert (Tate Britain)
- Cornelia Parker (Tate Britain)
- Raphael (National Gallery)
- Lee Miller: Nurses (Fitzrovia Chapel)
- Power & Image: Royal and Aristocratic Tiaras (Sotheby's)
- Power & Image: Royal Portraiture & Iconography (Sotheby's)
- Summer Exhibition (Royal Academy)
- Vision & Virtuosity by Tiffany & Co (Saatchi Gallery)
- Milton Avery, American Colourist (Royal Academy)
- William Kentridge (Royal Academy)
- Cezanne (Tate Modern)
- Re: Imagining Musicals (V&A)
- Making Modernism (Royal Academy)
- Lucian Freud: New Perspectives (National Gallery)
- WInslow Homer: Force of Nature (National Gallery)
Theatre 2022
- Playing Maggie (Riverside Studios)
- Ava : The Secret Conversations (Riverside Studios)
- The Deceiver (Questors)
- Wuthering Heights (Lyttelton)
- Persuasion (Rose Theatre)
- A Thousand Clowns (Theatre Royal, Windsor)
- Scandaltown (Lyric, Hammersmith)
- The Straw Chair (Finborough Theatre)
- The Corn is Green (Lyttelton)
- Bliss (Finborough Theatre)
- Hangmen (Questors)
- Impromptu Shakespeare (Riverside Studios)
- Wildcat's Last Waltz (Riverside Studios)
- A Doll's House, Part 2 (Donmar Warehouse)
- Much Ado About Nothing (Lyttelton)
- Sir John in Love (Holland Park Opera)
- The Two Popes (Rose Theatre, Kingston)
- The Crucible (Olivier)
- Haunting Julia (Questors)
- The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary! (Jermyn Street Theatre)
- As You Like It (@Soho Place)
Films 2022
- Cyrano
- Parallel Mothers
- Death on the Nile
- The Duke
- The Phantom of the Open
- The Worst Person in the World
- The Lost City
- Downton Abbey: A New Era
- Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
- The Railway Children Return
- Eric Ravilious, Drawn to War
- Thirteen Lives
- Don't Worry Darling
- Emily
- Allelujah
- The Son
- Mrs Harris Goes to Paris
- Living
- Bones and All
- Till
- Blue Jean
Books Read 2022
- The Paper Palace (Miranda Cowley Heller)
- The Crown (Robert Lacey)
- Foreign Bodies (Cynthia Ozick)
- Silverview (John le Carré)
- The Promise (Damon Galgut)
- Empty Nest (ed Carol Ann Duffy)
- Happenstance (Carol Shields)
- How Much of These Hills Is Gold (C Pam Zhang)
- My Town (David Gentleman)
- The Slaves of Solitude (Patrick Hamilton)
- The Twyford Code (Janice Hallett)
- The Offing (Benjamin Myers)
- Widowland (CJ Carey)
- The Feast (Margaret Kennedy)
- Tunnel 29 (Helena Merriman)
- Small Things Like These (Claire Keegan)
- The Matrix (Lauren Groff)
- Letters to Camondo (Edmund de Waal)
- Five Strangers (E V Adamson)
- Boneland (Alan Garner)
- Slow Horses (Mick Herron)
- The Owl Service (Alan Garner)
- Latchkey Ladies (Marjorie Grant)
- He Used Thought as a Wife (Tim Key)
- National Treasures: Saving the Nation's Art in WW2 (Caroline Shenton)
- Darkness Falls from the Air (Nigel Balchin)
- Plenty Under the Counter (Kathleen Hewitt)
- The Waters Under the Earth (John Moore)
- Miss Benson's Beetle (Rachel Joyce)
- The Other Americans (Laila Lamani)
- The Plot (Jean Hanff Korelitz)
- The Beloved Girls (Harriet Evans)
- The Language of Food (Annabel Abbs)
- The Night Watchman (Louise Erdrich)
- Free Love (Tessa Hadley)
- Redhead by the Side of the Road (Anne Tyler)
- These Precious Days (Ann Patchett)
- Summer Pudding (Susan Scarlett)
- A Day in Summer (JL Carr)
- What Artists Wear (Charlie Porter)
- Brat Farrar (Josephine Tey)
- The Vanishing Half (Brit Bennett)
- Death and the Penguin (Andrey Kurkov)
- Territory of Light (Yuko Tsushima)
- Godmersham Park (Gill Hornby)
- The Year of Miracles (Ella Risbridger)
- Still LIfe (Sarah Winman)
- The Diary of a Provincial Lady (EM Delafield)
- Family Roundabout (Richmal Crompton)
- Good Pop Bad Pop (Jarvis Cocker)
- Mrs Lorimer's Quiet Summer (Molly Clavering)
- Edith and Kim (Charlotte Philby)
- French Braid (Anne Tyler)
- Herland/The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)
- I Remember Nothing (Nora Ephron)
- Mrs March (Virginia Feito)
- Small Pleasures (Clare Chambers)
- What She Ate (Laura Shapiro)
- Mrs Osmond (John Banville)
- The Bloater (Rosemary Tonks)
- One Night in Winter (Simon Sebag Montefiore)
- Young Anne (Dorothy Whipple)
- Ethan Frome (Edith Wharton)
- One Afternoon (Sian James)
- The Manningtree Witches (AK Blakemore)
- Act of Oblivion (Robert Harris)
Exhibitions 2021
- Frances Macdonald (Portland Gallery)
- Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution (V&A)
- Hogarth and Europe (Tate Britain)
- Late Constable (Royal Academy)
- Sophie Taeuber-Arp (Tate Modern)
- Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms (Tate Modern)
- Julian Opie (Pitzhanger Manor)
- Bellotto: The Königstein Views Reunited (National Gallery)
- Charleston, The Bloomsbury Muse (Philip Mould)
- Summer Exhibition (Royal Academy)
- The Picture Library (The Photographers' Gallery)
- Centuries in the Making, An Exhibition of works by Grinling Gibbons (Bonhams)
- Noël Coward: Art & Style (Guildhall Art Gallery)
- Paula Rego (Tate Britain)
- Bags: Inside Out (V&A)
- Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser (V&A)
- David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020 (Royal Academy)
- Michael Armitage, Paradise Edict (Royal Academy)
- Ken Howard (Portland Gallery)
- Gilbert & George: New Normal Pictures (White Cube)
Theatre 2021
- Trouble in Mind (NT, Dorfman)
- The Seven Pomegranate Seeds (Rose Theatre)
- The Cherry Orchard (Theatre Royal, Windsor)
- Twelfth Night (Shakespeare's Globe)
- Leopards (Rose Theatre)
- This Beautiful Future (Jermyn Street Theatre)
- Oleanna (Arts Theatre)
- Lone Flyer (Jermyn Street Theatre)
- Solstice (English National Ballet/Royal Festival Hall)
- Happy Days (Riverside Studios)
Films 2021
- Operation Mincemeat
- Boxing Day
- King Richard
- Silent Night
- The French Dispatch
- Mothering Sunday
- Belfast
- The Souvenir: Part 2
- Dune
- The Courier
- Free Guy
- Nowhere Special
- The Last Letter from Your Lover
- Tove
- The Father
- In the Heights
- Minari
- Nomadland
Books Read 2021
- A Girl Returned (Donatella di Pietrantonio)
- American Dirt (Jeanine Cummins)
- Spring Cannot be Cancelled (David Hockney, Martin Gayford)
- Oh William (Elizabeth Strout)
- The Thursday Murder Club (Richard Osman)
- Tension (EM Delafield)
- Sorrow and Bliss (Meg Mason)
- Starlight (Stella Gibbons)
- Address Unknown (Kathrine Kressmann Taylor)
- A Meal in Winter (Hubert Mingarelli)
- Expiation (Elizabeth von Arnim)
- Piranesi (Susanna Clarke)
- The Silent Traveller in London (Chiang Yee)
- Life Among the Savages (Shirley Jackson)
- Voices in the Evening (Natalia Ginzburg)
- Miss Austen (Gill Hornby)
- A Town Called Solace (Mary Lawson)
- The Island of Missing Trees (Elif Shafak)
- The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym (Paula Byrne)
- Taken at the Flood (Agatha Christie)
- Nine Perfect Strangers (Liane Moriarty)
- Family History (Vita Sackville-West)
- Maigret's Mistake (Georges Simenon)
- A Fugue in Time (Rumer Godden)
- Road Ends (Mary Lawson)
- Rodham (Curtis Sittenfeld)
- Adam Bede (George Eliot)
- The Bloomsbury Cookbook (Jans Ondaatje Rolls)
- Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Toshikazu Kawaguchi)
- Love (Elizabeth von Arnim)
- A City of Bells (Elizabeth Goudge)
- This is the Story of a Happy Marriage (Ann Patchett)
- Agent Sonya (Ben Macintyre)
- Autumn (Ali Smith)
- On the Beach (Nevil Shute)
- Birds of America (Mary McCarthy)
- Some Thoughts on the Common Toad (George Orwell)
- The Little Library Year (Kate Young)
- The Interestings (Meg Wolitzer)
- Ignorance (Michèle Roberts)
- Hons and Rebels (Jessica Mitford)
- The Distant Land of my Father (Bo Caldwell)
- Love in the Blitz: The Greatest Lost Love Letters of the Second World War (Eileen Alexander)
- Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry (Margaret Kennedy)
- The Book of Dust. vol 2: The Secret Commonwealth (Philip Pullman)
- The Blackbirder (Dorothy B Hughes)
- Agent Running in the Field (John le Carré)
- Parallel LIves, Five Victorian Marriages (Phyllis Rose)
- My Dark Vanessa (Kate Elizabeth Russell)
Exhibitions 2020
- Turner's Modern World (Tate Britain)
- Unfinished Business: the Fight for Women's Rights (British Library)
- Bruce Nauman (Tate Modern)
- Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk (V&A)
- Grayson Perry: The MOST Specialest Relationship (Victoria Miro)
- Emily Patrick (Gallery 8)
- Mary Fedden (Portland Gallery)
- Hogarth: London Voices, London Lives (Pitzhanger Gallery)
- Gauguin and the Impressionists (Royal Academy)
- Feast & Fast (Fitzwilliam Museum)
- Nicolaes Maes: Dutch Master of the Golden Age (National Gallery)
- Titian: Love, Desire, Death (National Gallery)
- Picasso and Paper (Royal Academy)
- Dora Maar (Tate Modern)
- Andy Warhol (Tate Modern)
- Aubrey Beardsley (Tate Britain)
- Unbound, Visionary Women Collecting Textiles (Two Temple Place)
- British Baroque: Power and Illusion (Tate Britain)
- Mushrooms: The Art, Design and Future of Fungi (Somerset House)
- Divine People, The Art of Ambrose McEvoy (Philip Mould)
- Pre-Raphaelite Sisters (NPG)
Theatre 2020
- A Christmas Carol (Bridge Theatre)
- Love Letters (Theatre Royal Haymarket)
- Lloyd George Knew my Father (Theatre Royal, Windsor)
- Beat the Devil: A Covid Monologue (Bridge Theatre)
- The Lady in the Van (Theatre Royal, Windsor)
- Nora: A Doll's House (Young Vic)
- Isadora Now:Triple Bill (Barbican Theatre)
- Alina Cojocaru (Sadler's Wells)
- A Christmas Carol (Old Vic)
Films 2020
- Rebecca
- Supernova
- Parasite
- Simple Women
- Flesh Out (Il Corpo della Sposa)
- Dream Horse
- Emma
- Military Wives
- Little Joe
- The Personal History of David Copperfield
- Queen & Slim
- Yves (All About Yves)
- Bombshell
Books Read 2020
- Tea is so Intoxicating (Mary Essex)
- My Husband Simon (Mollie Panter-Downes)
- My Sister, the Serial Killer (Oyinkan Braithwaite)
- Motherwell (Deborah Orr)
- The Dutch House (Ann Patchett)
- Crucible of Fools (MS Power)
- Dinner with Edward (Isabel Vincent)
- The Secrets We Kept (Lara Prescott)
- On Chapel Sands (Laura Cumming)
- The Siege of Krishnapur (JG Farrell)
- Dangerous Ages (Rose Macaulay)
- The Doctor's Wife (Mary Elizabeth Braddon)
- The Other Bennet Sister (Janice Hadlow)
- Milkman (Anna Burns)
- Becoming (Michelle Obama)
- A Lost Lady (Willa Cather)
- The Binding (Bridget Collins)
- The Deepening Stream (Dorothy Canfield Fisher)
- A Certain Justice (PD James)
- The Oppermanns (Lion Feuchtwanger)
- Derek Jarman's Garden
- Drina's Dancing Year (Jean Estoril)
- Ballet for Drina (Jean Estoril)
- An Academic Question (Barbara Pym)
- Cheerfulness Breaks In (Angela Thirkell)
- The Shoreless Sea (Mollie Panter-Downes)
- Brother of the More Famous Jack (Barbara Trapido)
- Crampton Hodnet (Barbara Pym)
- The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (Brian Moore)
- The Man on the Balcony (Sjowall & Wahloo)
- The White Witch (Elizabeth Goudge)
- Fleishman is in Trouble (Taffy Brodesser-Akner)
- Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes (Virginia Nicholson)
- Convenience Store Woman (Sayaka Murata)
- Mrs Gaskell & Me (Nell Stevens)
- The Misses Mallett (EH Young)
- The Rising Tide (Molly Keane)
Exhibitions 2019
- Bridget Riley (Hayward)
- Museum of Architecture's Gingerbread City (Somerset House)
- Antony Gormley (RA)
- Laura Knight RA: A Working Life (RA)
- Olaffur Eliasson: In Real Life (Tate Modern)
- The Lost Dress of Elizabeth I (Hampton Court Palace)
- Posy Simmonds: A Retrospective (House of Illustration)
- What to Look for in the Garden, A Ladybird Books Exhibition (Garden Museum)
- William Blake (Tate Britain)
- Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver (NPG)
- Only Human: Martin Parr (NPG)
- Ivon Hitchens: The Painter in the Woods (Garden Museum)
- Corita Kent: Power Up (House of Illustration)
- Russia, Royalty & The Romanovs (Queen's Gallery)
- Mary Quant (V&A)
- Chihuly: Reflections on Nature (Kew Gardens)
- Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light (National Gallery)
- Anish Kapoor (Pitzhanger Manor)
- Don McCullin (Tate Britain)
- Van Gogh and Britain (Tate Britain)
- John Ruskin, The Power of Seeing (Two Temple Place)
- Mary Fedden (Portland Gallery)
- Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams (V&A)
- Pierre Bonnard: The Colour of Memory (Tate Modern)
Theatre 2019
- Fascinating Aïda (Queen Elizabeth Hall)
- Vassa (Almeida)
- Hansard (Lyttelton)
- A Woman of No Importance (Richmond Theatre)
- The Night Watch (Hexagon Theatre, Reading)
- The Starry Messenger (Wyndham's)
- [Un]leashed (Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler's Wells)
- Orpheus Descending (Menier Chocolate Factory)
- Jane Clegg (Finborough Theatre)
- A German Life (Bridge Theatre)
- Avalanche: A Love Story (Barbican Theatre)
- Captain Corelli's Mandolin (Rose Theatre)
- Wise Children (Richmond Theatre)
- Blood Knot (Orange Tree)
- The American Clock (Old Vic)
- An Evening with Vanessa Redgrave (Rose Theatre)
Films 2019
- Little Women
- The Captive
- So Long, My Son
- Knives Out
- Judy & Punch
- The Wolf's Call (Le Chant du Loup)
- Grâce à Dieu (By the Grace of God)
- The Aeronauts
- Brittany Runs a Marathon
- Sorry We Missed You
- Harriet
- Blackbird
- Hope Gap
- Children of a Lesser God
- Black and Blue
- Greener Grass
- Downton Abbey
- Internal Affairs
- The Farewell
- Sunshine
- Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood
- Pain&Glory
- Never Look Away
- Blinded by the Light
- The Current War
- Une Femme Douce
- The Flight (Urojahaj)
- The Souvenir
- The Good Liar
- Late Night
- After the Wedding
- Booksmart
- Memoir of War (La Douleur)
- Aladdin
- The White Crow
- Karl Lagerfeld, A Lonely King
- Wild Rose
- Ray Budd's Phantom of the Opera
- The Goddesses of Food (A la Recherche des Femmes Chefs)
- Fisherman's Friends
- Capernaum
- Midnight in Paris
- Eighth Grade
- Boy Erased
- Green Book
- Alien
- All Is True
- Colette
Books Read 2019
- A Family Romance (Anita Brookner)
- Victory in the KItchen, The Life of Churchill's Cook (Annie Gray)
- Olive, Again (Elizabeth Strout)
- Naming Monsters (Hannah Eaton)
- A Half Baked Idea: How grief, love and cake took me from the courtroom to Le Cordon Bleu (Olivia Potts)
- La Douleur (Marguerite Duras)
- The Hanging Garden (Ian Rankin)
- Other People's Houses (Lore Segal)
- The Devastating Boys (Elizabeth Taylor)
- Rose Under Fire (Elizabeth Wein)
- The Testaments (Margaret Atwood)
- Maigret and the Minister (Georges Simenon)
- Code Name Verity (Elizabeth Wein)
- Ghost Wall (Sarah Moss)
- Bitter Orange (Claire Fuller)
- Prague Spring (Simon Mawer)
- The Solitary Summer (Elizabeth von Arnim)
- The Tidal Zone (Sarah Moss)
- Circe (Madeline Miller)
- The Glass Cage (Georges Simenon)
- The Greatcoat (Helen Dunmore)
- Great Granny Webster (Caroline Blackwood)
- All Among the Barley (Melissa Harrison)
- Eustace and Hilda (LP Hartley)
- The Sixth Sense (LP Hartley)
- House of Glass (Susan Fletcher)
- The Promise, Love and Loss in Modern ChIna (Xinran)
- The Shrimp and the Anemone (LP Hartley)
- Annelies (David Gillham)
- Spring Magic (DE Stevenson)
- Late in the Day (Tessa Hadley)
- The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Heather Morris)
- My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Ottessa Moshfegh)
- Treasures of Botanical Art (Shirley Sherwood and Martyn Rix)
- The Tin Can Tree (Anne Tyler)
- Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves (Rachel Malik)
- During the Reign of the Queen of Persia (Joan Chase)
- The Party (Elizabeth Day)
- Small Country (Gaël Faye)
- Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter (Lucinda Hawksley)
- Ladder of Years (Anne Tyler)
- The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton (Kathryn Hughes)
- Queen Victoria's Stalker (Jan Bondeson)
- Everything I Know About Love (Dolly Alderton)
- The Fashion in Shrouds (Margery Allingham)
- A Long Way from Verona (Jane Gardam)
- The Forgiven (Lawrence Osborne)
- Dining with the Durrells (David Shimwell)
- The Poison Bed (EC Fremantle)
- Thrush Green (Miss Read)
- Zennor in Darkness (Helen Dunmore)
- American Wife (Curtis Sittenfeld)
- The Snow Child (Eowyn Ivey)
- Melmoth (Sarah Perry)
- Sunstroke and Other Stories (Tessa Hadley)
- Transcription (Kate Atkinson)
- The Tobacconist (Robert Seethaler)
- Normal People (Sally Rooney)
Exhibitions 2018
- Gainsborough's Family (NPG)
- The Museum of Architecture's GIngerbread City (V&A)
- Courtauld Impressionists, From Manet to Cézanne (National Gallery)
- Mantegna and Bellini (National Gallery)
- Edward Burne-Jones (Tate Britain)
- Christian Marclay: The Clock (Tate Modern)
- Anni Albers (Tate Modern)
- Azzedine Alaïa, The Couturier (Design Museum)
- Nature Table (Town House, Spitalfields)
- Enid Marx: Print, Pattern and Popular Art (House of Illustration)
- Edward Bawden (Dulwich Picture Gallery)
- Flower Fairies, Botanical Magic (Garden Museum)
- Summer Exhibition (Royal Academy)
- The Great Spectacle (Royal Academy)
- Cedric Morris: Artist Plantsman (Garden Museum)
- Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up (V&A)
- Landscape: Tacita Dean (Royal Academy)
- Aftermath: Art in the Wake of WW1 (Tate Britain)
- Orla Kiely:A Life in Pattern (Fashion Museum)
- Charles II: Art & Power (Queen's Gallery)
- Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art (Tate Modern)
- Fashioned from Nature (V&A)
- Made in North Korea, Everyday Graphics from the DPRK (House of Illustration)
- Charmed Lives in Greece: Ghika, Craxton, Leigh Fermor (British Museum)
- Monet and Architecture (National Gallery)
- Charles I, King and Collector (Royal Academy)
- Picasso 1932: Love, Fame, Tragedy (Tate Modern)
- Ocean Liners: Speed and Style (V&A)
- Into the Woods: Trees in Photography (V&A)
- All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a century of painting life (Tate Britain)
- Rhythm & Reaction: The Age of Jazz in Britain (Two Temple Place)
- Andreas Gursky (Hayward Gallery)
- Monochrome: Painting in Black and White (National Gallery)
- Cézanne's Portraits (NPG)
- Tove Jansson (Dulwich Picture Gallery)
- Helen Allingham (Watts Gallery)
Theatre 2018
- Switzerland (Ambassadors Theatre)
- Pinter Four: Moonlight, Night School (Harold PInter Theatre)
- The Inheritance Pt 2 (Noel Coward Theatre)
- Fire&Fury, Birmingham Royal Ballet (Sadler's Wells)
- Tap Dogs (Peacock)
- The Inheritance Pt 1 (Noel Coward Theatre)
- A Winter's Tale (Shakespeare's Globe)
- Hogarth's Progress: The Taste of the Town (Rose Theatre)
- Hogarth's Progress: The Art of Success (Rose Theatre)
- Consent (Harold Pinter Theatre)
- Imperium II: Dictator (Gielgud)
- Imperium I: Conspirator (Gielgud)
- One for Sorrow (Royal Court)
- Utility (Orange Tree)
- Quiz (Noel Coward Theatre)
- Nightfall (Bridge Theatre)
- Mood Music (Old Vic)
- Instructions for Correct Assembly (Royal Court)
- The Plough and the Stars (Lyric, Hammersmith)
- Fanny and Alexander (Old Vic)
- Curtains (Rose Theatre)
- Picnic at Hanging Rock (Barbican)
- The Captive Queen (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)
- Hedda Gabler (NT touring)
Films 2018
- Stan and Ollie
- The Favourite
- It's a Wonderful Life
- Farewell My Indian Soldier
- Some Like It Hot
- Can You Ever Forgive Me?
- The Little Stranger
- The Wife
- First Man
- White Boy Rick
- A Star is Born
- A Simple Favour
- Cold War
- Crazy Rich Asians
- The Godfather
- American Animals
- C'est la Vie
- Apostasy
- Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
- Vertigo
- Searching
- Hearts Beat Loud
- On Call (La Permanence)
- Puzzle
- The Confession (L'Aveu)
- Leave No Trace
- The Breadwinner
- On Chesil Beach
- Phantom of the Paradise
- Edie
- The Sound of Music
- Lean on Pete
- Same Old Song
- Beast
- Funny Cow
- The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society
- Look Back in Anger
- Grease
- The Rape of Recy Taylor
- Ready Player One
- A Wedding
- Love, Simon
- Finding Your Feet
- A Fantastic Woman
- Makala
- Cézanne et Moi
- Mother, I Love You (Mammu, es Tevi milu)
Books Read 2018
- A Truth Universally Acknowledged:33 reasons why we can't stop reading Jane Austen (ed Susannah Carson)
- Firefly (Henry Porter)
- Paris Echo (Sebastian Faulks)
- Swimming Studies (Leanne Shapton)
- Keep the Aspidistra Flying (George Orwell)
- Police at the Funeral (Margery Allingham)
- A Cook's Tour (Anthony Bourdain)
- Last Stories (William Trevor)
- The New House (Lettice Cooper)
- The Gastronomical Me (MFK Fisher)
- The Prince's Boy (Paul Bailey)
- Journey by Moonlight (Antal Szerb)
- What She Ate (Laura Shapiro)
- Less (Andrew Sean Greer)
- An American Marriage (Tayari Jones)
- The Good Women of China (Xinran)
- Some Hope (Edward St Aubyn)
- The Ghost Writer (Philip Roth)
- A Game of Hide and Seek (Elizabeth Taylor)
- The Dig (John Preston)
- Home Fire (Kamila Shamsie)
- The Only Story (Julian Barnes)
- The Librarian (Salley Vickers)
- The Château (William Maxwell)
- The Friendly Ones (Philip Hensher)
- The FitzOsbornes in Exile (Michell Cooper)
- Tangerine (Christine Mangan)
- Educated (Tara Westover)
- No Place to Lay One's Head (Françoise Frenkel)
- The Voyage Out (Virginia Woolf)
- The Reading Cure, How Books Restored My Appetite (Laura Freeman)
- Night (Elie Wiesel)
- The Dry (Jane Harper)
- Life in the Garden (Penelope Lively)
- Dear Mrs Bird (AJ Pearce)
- MI5 and Me, A Coronet Among the Spooks (Charlotte Bingham)
- Lullaby (Leïla Slimani)
- Bookworm, A Memoir of Childhood Reading (Lucy Mangan)
- Anthony Powell:Dancing to the Music of Time (Hilary Spurling)
- Bad News (Edward St Aubyn)
- Angle of Repose (Wallace Stegner)
- The Lark (E Nesbit)
- The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock (Imogen Hermes Gowar)
- The Nether World (George Gissing)
- A Brief History of Montmaray (Michelle Cooper)
- Grace Notes (Bernard MacLaverty)
- Birdcage Walk (Helen Dunmore)
- Diary of an Ordinary Schoolgirl (Margaret Forster)
- Golden Hill (Francis Spufford)
- The Beast (Alexander Starritt)
- Ravilious & Co, The Pattern of Friendship (Andy Friend)
- A Very British Scandal (John Preston)
- National Provincial (Lettice Cooper)
- Busman's Honeymoon (Dorothy L Sayers)
- The Walworth Beauty (Michèle Roberts)
- A Bunch of Sweet Peas (Henry Donald)
- Strong Poison (Dorothy L Sayers)
- Gaudy Night (Dorothy L Sayers)
- Jacob's Room is Full of Books (Susan Hill)
Exhibitions 2017
- Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Classic (V&A)
- The Working Artist: The East London Group (Nunnery Gallery)
- Erté, A Celebration (Grosvenor Gallery)
- May Morris, Art and Life (William Morris Gallery)
- Ilya and Emila Kabokov: Not Everyone Will Be Taken into the Future (Tate Modern)
- Modigliani (Tate Modern)
- Red Star Over Russia: A Revolution in Visual Culture, 1905-55 (Tate Modern)
- Poster Girls (London Transport Museum)
- Reflections:Van Eyck & the Pre-Raphaelites (National Gallery)
- Impressionists in London: French Artists in Exile, 1870-1904 (Tate Britain)
- Emily Patrick (Gallery 8)
- Drawn in Colour: Degas from the Burrell (National Gallery)
- Tradescant's Orchard (Garden Museum)
- Rachel Whiteread (Tate Britain)
- Ravilious & Co: The Pattern of Friendship (Towner Art Gallery)
- Second Nature: The Art of Charles Tunnicliffe (Royal Academy)
- Matisse in the Studio (Royal Academy)
- Margaret Clarke: An Independent Spirit (National Gallery of Ireland)
- Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry (National Gallery of Ireland)
- True to Life: British Realist Painting in the 1920s and 1930s (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art)
- Sargent: The Watercolours (Dulwich Picture Gallery)
- Canaletto & the Art of Venice (Queen's Gallery)
- Enlightened Princesses (Kensington Palace)
- Diana: Her Fashion Story (Kensington Palace)
- Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion (V&A)
- Giacometti (Tate Modern)
- Josef Frank, Patterns - Furniture - Painting (Fashion Museum)
- Howard Hodgkin:Absent Friends (NPG)
- Vanessa Bell (Dulwich Picture Gallery)
- America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s (Royal Academy)
- Australia's Impressionists (National Gallery)
- Paul Nash (Tate Britain)
- David Hockney (Tate Britain)
- Sussex Modernism (Two Temple Place)
- Anthony Green RA: The Life and Death of Miss Dupont (Royal Academy)
- Feeding the 400 (Foundling Museum)
- Opus Anglicanum (V&A)
Films 2017
- Soleil Battant
- Stronger
- God's Own Country
- The Disaster Artist
- Wonder
- The Florida Project
- Aurore (Fifty Springtimes)
- The Killing of a Sacred Deer
- Call Me By Your Name
- The Party
- Journey's End
- Goodbye Christopher Robin
- The Glass Castle
- Borg vs McEnroe
- Victoria & Abdul
- The Limehouse Golem
- Dunkirk
- Le Doulos
- The Big Sick
- Slack Bay (Ma Loute)
- My Cousin Rachel
- Gifted
- Manhattan
- The Promise
- Lady Macbeth
- The Handmaiden
- Their Finest
- Going in Style
- The Time of Their Lives
- Patriots Day
- My Internship in Canada (Guibord s'en-va-t-en guerre}
- Moonlight
- Hidden Figures
- Toni Erdmann
- Hacksaw Ridge
- Jackie
- Lion
- Irreplaceable (Médecin de Campagne)
- Manchester by the Sea
Books Read 2017
- The Red House Mystery (AA Milne)
- Excellent Women (Barbara Pym)
- Manderley Forever, The Life of Daphne du Maurier (Tatiana de Rosnay)
- What Happened (Hilary Rodham Clinton)
- The Long View (Elizabeth Jane Howard)
- The Sparsholt Affair (Alan Hollingshurst)
- Book of Dust/Vol 1 La Belle Sauvage (Philip Pullman)
- Abide with Me (Elizabeth Strout)
- Hillbilly Elegy (JM Vance)
- The Misty Harbour (Georges Simenon)
- Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (Gail Honeyman)
- Munich (Robert Harris)
- A Life of My Own (Claire Tomalin)
- A Legacy of Spies (John le Carré)
- The Improbability of Love (Hannah Rothschild)
- Midwinter Break (Bernard MacLaverty)
- The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (Georges Simenon)
- The End of Eddy (Édouard Louis)
- Joining the Dots (Juliet Gardiner)
- The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead)
- Dirty Snow (Georges Simenon)
- The Good Bohemian, The Letters of Ida John (ed Rebecca John and MIchael Holroyd)
- The Year of the Runaways (Sunjeev Sahota)
- Home Cooking (Laurie Colwin)
- Cry, Mother Spain (Lydie Salvayre)
- Party Girls Die in Pearls (Plum Sykes)
- A Talent for Murder (Andrew Wilson)
- Never Mind (Edward St Aubyn)
- Lost for Words (Edward St Aubyn)
- Going Abroad (Rose Macaulay)
- Mamma (Diana Tutton)
- An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth (Chris Hadfield)
- Agnes Grey (Anne Brontë)
- A Separation (Katie Kitamura)
- The Good People (Hannah Kent)
- The Power (Naomi Alderson)
- Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
- Emma Brown (Clare Boylan)
- The Case of the Late Pig (Margery Allingham)
- Slipstream (Elizabeth Jane Howard)
- Enlightened Princesses, Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte and the Shaping of the Modern World (Joanna Marschner)
- Nutshell (Ian McEwan)
- The Blue Flower (Penelope Fitzgerald)
- Some Country Houses and their Owners (James Lees-Milne)
- Emmeline (Judith Rossner)
- Requiem for a Wren (Nevil Shute)
- The Orchardist (Amanda Coplin)
- Let Me Tell You About a Man I Knew (Susan Fletcher)
- Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders)
- Bond Street Story (Norman Collins)
- The Long Weekend, Life in the English Country House Between the Wars (Adrian Tinniswood)
- A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles)
- This House of Grief (Helen Garner)
- Terms and Conditions, Life in Girls' Boarding-Schools, 1939-1979 (Ysenda Maxtone-Graham)
- The Real Mrs Miniver (Ysenda Maxtone Graham)
- Earth and High Heaven (Gwethalyn Graham)
- Swing Time (Zadie Smith)
- A Florence Diary (Diana Athill)
- Flâneuse (Lauren Elkin)
- Léon and Louise (Alex Capus)
- It Can't Happen Here (Sinclair Lewis)
- The Greedy Queen, Eating with Victoria (Annie Gray)
- Miss Bunting (Angela Thirkell)
- Jane Austen At Home (Lucy Worsley)
- Offshore (Penelope Fitzgerald
- Commonwealth (Ann Patchett)
- Maigret Victorious (Georges Simenon)
- If England Were Invaded (William Le Queux)
- Pomfret Towers (Angela Thirkell)
- Burial Rites (Hannah Kent)
- My Name is Victoria (Lucy Worsley)
- The Diary of a Nobody (George and William Grossmith)
- The Growing Summer (Noel Streatfeild)
Exhibitions 2016
- Beyond Caravaggio (National Gallery)
- Picasso Portraits (NPG)
- Queen Victoria in Paris (Compton Verney)
- Stanley Spencer, Visionary Painter of the Natural World (Stanley Spencer Gallery)
- Close Up and Personal: Victorians and their Photographs (Watts Gallery)
- Winifred Knights (Dulwich Picture Gallery)
- Missoni Art Colour (Fashion Museum)
- The Empress and the Gardener (Hampton Court)
- Nikolai Astrup: Painting Norway (Dulwich Picture Gallery)
- Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear (V&A)
- Dutch Flowers (National Gallery)
- Samuel Pepys, Plague, Fire, Revolution (National Maritime Museum)
- Botticelli Reimagined (V&A)
- Boydell's Vision, The Shakespeare Gallery in the 18th Century (Compton Verney)
- Shakespeare in Art, Tempests, Tyrants and Tragedy (Compton Verney)
- Vogue 100, A Century of Style (NPG)
- Beyond Beauty, Transforming the Body in Ancient Egypt (Two Temple Place)
- Painting the Modern Garden:Monet to Matisse (Royal Academy)
Films 2016
- A United Kingdom
- Rosalie Blum
- The Light Between Oceans
- Deepwater Horizon
- I, Daniel Blake
- Hell or High Water
- Anthropoid
- Captain Fantastic
- Churchill
- Mustang
- Saint Cyr
- Love and Friendship
- Romeo and Juliet
- Sing Street
- Son of Saul
- Florence Foster Jenkins
- Eye in the Sky
- Eddie the Eagle
- Marguerite
- Truth
- Lord of the Flies
- The Lobster
- A Bigger Splash
- Spotlight
- Trumbo
Books Read 2016
- The Secrets of Wishtide (Kate Saunders)
- Journey into Fear (Eric Ambler)
- His Bloody Project (Graeme Macrae Burnet)
- Orchid, A Cultural History (Jim Endersby)
- A Manual for Cleaning Women (Lucia Berlin)
- The Essex Serpent (Sarah Perry)
- Caught in the Revolution, Petrograd 1917 (Helen Rappaport)
- Maigret et le client du samedi (Georges Simenon)
- Kew Gardens (Virginia Woolf)
- Celia (EH Young)
- Conclave (Robert Harris)
- The Many (Wyl Menmuir)
- Elizabeth Jane Howard, A Dangerous Innocence (Artemis Cooper)
- A Whole Life (Robert Seethaler)
- The Vicar's Daughter (EH Young)
- The Sportswriter (Richard Ford)
- Plant: Exploring the Botanical World
- The Warden (Anthony Trollope)
- End Games in Bordeaux (Allan Massie)
- Cold Winter in Bordeaux (Allan Massie)
- When the Wind Blows (Cyril Hare)
- History of the Rain (Niall Williams)
- In the Year of Jubilee (George Gissing)
- A Man Called Ove (Fredrik Backman)
- Trio (Sue Gee)
- Everyone Brave Is Forgiven (Chris Cleave)
- The Stranger's Child (Alan Hollinghurst)
- The Invention of Nature, The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt (Andrea Wulf)
- Maigret and the Minister (Georges Simenon)
- Carol (Patricia Highsmith)
- Dark Summer in Bordeaux (Allan Massie)
- Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Elena Ferrante)
- Lucy Carmichael (Margaret Kennedy)
- Brightness (Elizabeth Jenkins)
- Toasted English (Marghanita Laski)
- Robert and Helen (Elizabeth Jenkins)
- Liberty Bar (Georges Simenon)
- Guard Your Daughters (Diana Tutton)
- Someone at a Distance (Dorothy Whipple)
- Grief is the Thing with Feathers (Max Porter)
- The Ladies of Lyndon (Margaret Kennedy)
- Together and Apart (Margaret Kennedy)
- The Bar on the Seine (Georges Simenon)
- Little Man,What Now? (Hans Fallada)
- A Woman on the Edge of Time (Jeremy Gavron)
- Death in Bordeaux (Allan Massie)
- The Innocents (Margery Sharp)
- A House Full of Daughters (Juliet Nicolson)
- The Flemish House (Georges Simenon)
- Freya (Anthony Quinn)
- The Catherine Wheel (Elizabeth Harrower)
- Oxford College Gardens (Tim Richardson)
- The Folded Leaf (William Maxwell)
- The Saint-Fiacre Affaire (Georges Simenon)
- My Name is Lucy Barton (Elizabeth Strout)
- Mothering Sunday (Graham Swift)
- Lock Nº1 (Georges Simenon)
- A Single Man (Christopher Isherwood)
- Maria Merian's Butterflies (Kate Heard)
- History of a Suicide (Jill Bialosky)
- Alive, Alive Oh! (Diana Athill)
- Maman, What Are We Called Now?(Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar)
- Shakespeare's Gardens (Jackie Bennett)
- The Godwits Fly (Robin Hyde)
- Lady with Green Fingers, The Life of Jane Loudon (Bea Howe)
- The Bostonians (Henry James)
- A Notable Woman, The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt (ed: Simon Garfield)
- Strangers on a Bridge, The Case of Colonel Abel (James B Donovan)
- Eliza Rose (Lucy Worsley)
- Carrie's War (Nina Bawden)
- H is for Hawk (Helen Macdonald)
Exhibitions 2015
- Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer (Queen's Gallery)
- Christmas Past (Geffrye Museum)
- Tintin: Hergé's Masterpiece (Somerset House)
- Ai Weiwei (Royal Academy)
- Bejewelled Treasures: The Al Thani Collection (V&A)
- Jean-Etienne Liotard (Royal Academy)
- White (Royal Academy)
- Mademoiselle Privé (Saatchi Gallery)
- Periodic Tales: The Art of the Elements (Compton Verney)
- The Fabric of India (V&A)
- Ladybird by Design (House of Illustration)
- Gnome & Away, Secrets of the Collection (Garden Museum)
- Sonia Delaunay (Tate Modern)
- Audrey Hepburn, Portraits of an Icon (NPG)
- The Arts & Crafts House Then and Now (Compton Verney)
- Summer Exhibition (Royal Academy)
- Shoes: Pleasure and Pain (V&A)
- Pre-War Scotland (Richard Green)
- Joshua Reynolds: Experiments in Paint (Wallace Collection)
- Liberating Fashion: Aesthetic Dress in Victorian Portraits (Watts Gallery)
- Ravilious (Dulwich Picture Gallery)
- Fashion on the Ration (Imperial War Museum)
- Richard Diebenkorn (Royal Academy)
- Emily Patrick (Gallery 8)
- Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (V&A)
- The Non-Conformists: Photographs by Martin Parr (Compton Verney)
- Canaletto: Celebrating Britain (Compton Verney)
- Paradise Regained: Stanley Spencer in the Aftermath of World War One (Stanley Spencer Gallery)
- Inventing Impressionism (National Gallery)
- Peder Balke (National Gallery)
- Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends (NPG)
- Cotton to Gold, Extraordinary Collections of the Industrial North West (Two Temple Place)
- Lines in the Ice: Seeking the Northwest Passage (British Library)
- Terror and Wonder:The Gothic Imagination (British Library)
- From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia (Dulwich Picture Gallery)
- Grayson Perry: Who Are You? (NPG)
- Anarchy & Beauty: William Morris and His Legacy, 1860-1960 (NPG)
Films 2015
- Ex Machina
- Carol
- Bridge of Spies
- Brooklyn
- The Lady in the Van
- Brief Encounter
- Suffragette
- 45 Years
- In Cold Blood
- Everyone's Going to Die
- Far from the Madding Crowd
- Suite Française
- The Tales of Hoffmann
- The Theory of Everything
Books Read 2015
- Fates and Furies (Lauren Groff)
- Mystery in White (J Jefferson Farjeon)
- The Brimming Cup (Dorothy Canfield)
- Mr Mac and Me (Esther Freud)
- The White Road (Edmund de Waal)
- The Story of a New Name (Elena Ferrante)
- The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Richard Fleming)
- National Provincial (Lettice Cooper)
- Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life (Nina Stibbe)
- Celia Johnson (Kate Fleming)
- The Dust that Falls from Dreams (Louis de Bernières)
- Nelly Dean (Alison Case)
- William Robinson, The Wild Gardener (Richard Bisgrove)
- Forlorn Sunset (Michael Sadleir)
- Vain Shadow (Jane Hervey)
- The Shepherd's Life, A Tale of Life in the Lake District (James Rebanks)
- All My Puny Sorrows (Miriam Toews)
- Grace and Mary (Melvyn Bragg)
- Virginia Woolf (Alexandra Harris)
- Inside the O'Briens (Lisa Genova)
- Virginia Woolf's Garden, The story of the garden at Monk's House (Caroline Zoob)
- All the Birds, Singing (Evie Wyld)
- The Unexpected Professor, An Oxford Life in Books (John Carey)
- The Girl on the Train (Paula Hawkins)
- The Miniaturist (Jessie Burton)
- The Gardens of William Morris (Jill Duchess of Hamilton, Penny Hart & John Simmons)
- Bodies of Light (Sarah Moss)
- A Spool of Blue Thread (Anne Tyler)
- The World my Wilderness (Rose Macaulay)
- The Arts & Crafts House, Then and Now (Compton Verney exhibition catalogue)
- In the Country of Men (Hisham Matar)
- Entry Island (Peter May)
- County Chronicle (Angela Thirkell)
- Greengates (RC Sherriff)
- Fever (Mary Beth Keane)
- The Blue Hour, A Portrait of Jean Rhys (Lilian Pizzichini)
- The Angel in the Corner (Monica Dickens)
- Voyage in the Dark (Jean Rhys)
- Until Further Notice, I Am Alive (Tom Lubbock)
- My Brilliant Friend (Elena Ferrante)
- Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)
- Reunion (Fred Uhlman)
- Lost in Translation (Eva Hoffman)
- My Life in Houses (Margaret Forster)
- New Grub Street (George Gissing)
- Wordsworth's Gardens (Carol Buchanan)
- The Iceberg (Marion Coutts)
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying (Marie Kondo)
- The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Rachel Joyce)
- Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England (Peter Brears)
- Village of Secrets, Defying the Nazis in Vichy France (Caroline Moorehead)
Exhibitions 2014
- Ordinary Beauty - The Photography of Edwin Smith (RIBA)
- Rembrandt: The Late Works (National Gallery)
- Howard Hodgkin: Green Thoughts (Alan Cristea Gallery)
- Two Pataphysicians:Flanagan, Miró (Waddington Custot)
- Giovanni Battista Moroni (Royal Academy)
- Gardens and War (Garden Museum)
- Horst, Photographer of Style (V&A)
- Constable, The Making of a Master (V&A)
- Glasgow Style: Arts and Crafts from 1890-1930 (Blackwell)
- Primrose: Early Colour Photography in Russia (Photographers' Gallery)
- Lorenzo Vitturi: Dalston Anatomy (Photographers' Gallery)
- British Folk Art (Tate Britain)
- Reason & Intuition: Alvar Aalto and Ole Kolehmainen (Pitzhanger Manor)
- The Scottish Colourist, JD Fergusson (Pallant House)
- Made in Mexico: The Rebozo in Art, Culture and Fashion (Fashion Museum)
- Virginia Woolf, Art, Life and Vision (NPG)
- Ming, The Golden Empire (National Museum of Scotland)
- American Impressionism (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art)
- Alan Titchmarsh, 50 Years of Gardening (Garden Museum)
- Art and Life (Dulwich PG)
- Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs (Tate Modern)
- East Kent Printmakers (Whitstable Museum)
- Hockney, printmaker (Dulwich PG)
- Wedding Dresses, 1775-2014 (V&A)
- Boro (Somerset House)
- Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice (National Gallery)
- Strange Beauty: Masters of the German Renaissance (National Gallery)
- The Sunflowers (National Gallery)
- John Ruskin, Photographer and Draughtsman (Watts Gallery)
- The Great War in Portraits (NPG)
- William Kent, Designing Georgian Britain (V&A)
- Selling Dreams: 100 Years of Fashion Photography (V&A)
- The Glamour of Italian Fashion, 1945-2014 (V&A)
- Artist Textiles, Picasso to Warhol (Fashion Museum)
- Dale Chihuly, Beyond the Object (Halcyon Gallery)
- Joan Warburton and the Benton End Effect (Medici Gallery)
- Just Glass: The Art of the Possible (Pitzhanger Manor)
- Isabella Blow: Fashion Galore! (Somerset House)
- Art, Science & Exploration from the University of Cambridge Museums (Two Temple Place)
- Moore Rodin (Compton Verney)
- Cartier:Le Style et L'Histoire (Grand Palais)
- Fashion & Gardens (Garden Museum)
- Stanley Spencer:Heaven in a Hell of War (Somerset House)
- The Glamour of Bellville Sassoon (Fashion Museum)
- An American in London: Whistler and the Thames (Dulwich PG)
Films 2014
- Paddington
- Testament of Youth
- The Imitation Game
- Hockney: Live from LA
- Mr Turner
- Retour á Kotelnitch
- Finding Vivian Maier
- The Deer Hunter
- The Lady From Shanghai
- Day of the Flowers
- Monsieur Hire
- Plot for Peace
- The Grand Budapest Hotel
- Inside Llewyn Davis
- Funny Face
- The Invisible Woman
- Saving Mr Banks
- The Night of the Hunter
Books Read 2014
- This Boy, A Memoir of a Childhood (Alan Johnson)
- Lolly Willowes (Sylvia Townsend Warner)
- Boy of My Heart (Marie Leighton)
- Tempestuous Petticoat (Clare Leighton)
- Summer Half (Angela Thirkell)
- The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher:Stories (Hilary Mantel)
- The Lake District Murder (John Bude)
- Middlemarch (George Eliot)
- Six Poets, Hardy to Larkin (Alan Bennett)
- Man at the Helm (Nina Stibbe)
- The Children Act (Ian McEwan)
- The Bookstore (Deborah Meyler)
- The London Scene (Virginia Woolf)
- The Shock of the Fall (Nathan Filer)
- Murder Underground (Mavis Doriel Hay)
- The Happy Tree (Rosalind Murray)
- The Paying Guests (Sarah Waters)
- Disappeared (Anthony Quinn)
- On the Side of the Angels (Betty Miller)
- London War Notes (Mollie Panter-Downes)
- All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Duerr)
- An Officer and a Spy (Robert Harris)
- A Life Drawing, Recollections of an Illustrator (Shirley Hughes)
- Chatterton Square (EH Young)
- American Impressionism, A New Vision, 1880-1900 (ed Katherine M Bourguignon)
- The Yellow Dog (Georges Simenon)
- Ming, The Golden Empire (National Museums Scotland)
- Longbourn (Jo Baker)
- Out Stealing Horses (Per Petterson)
- Madame Solario (Anon)
- The Goldfinch (Donna Tartt)
- Journey Into the Whirlwind (Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg)
- Poppies and Roses (Marjorie Seldon)
- The Promise (Ann Weisgarber)
- A Curious Career (Lynn Barber)
- William (EH Young)
- The Three Sisters (May Sinclair)
- The Grass is Singing (Doris Lessing)
- Toast & Marmalade (Emma Bridgewater)
- Wilfred and Eileen (Jonathan Smith)
- A Discovery of Witches (Deborah Harkness)
- Murder Must Advertise (Dorothy L Sayers)
- The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton)
- A Delicate Truth (John le Carré)
- I'm Not Complaining (Ruth Adam)
- Making Poldark (Robin Ellis)
- Loving (Henry Green)
- The Pajama Game (Richard Bissell)
- The Wedding Dress (Edwina Ehrman)
- The Finishing School (Muriel Spark)
- The Stranger in the Mirror (Jane Shilling)
- How to be a Heroine (Samantha Ellis)
- Romantic Moderns (Alexandra Harris)
- The Vet's Daughter (Barbara Comyns)
- Rustication (Charles Palliser)
- Shopping, Seduction & Mr Selfridge (Lindy Woodhead)
Films 2013
- Enough Said
- Philomena
- Hannah Arendt
- Blue Jasmine
- Le Week-end
- What Maisie Knew
- Bonjour Tristesse
- Frances Ha
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Before Midnight
- Populaire
- Dial M for Murder
- The King of Marvin Gardens
- Scarecrow
- Chimpanzee
- Side Effects
Books Read 2013
- Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life (Nina Stibbe)
- London Match (Len Deighton)
- Mexico Set (Len Deighton)
- Berlin Game (Len Deighton)
- Coming Home (Sue Gee)
- Mrs Mike (Benedict and Nancy Freedman)
- Magda (Meike Ziervogel)
- Miss Buncle Married (DE Stevenson)
- Family Secrets, Living with Shame from the Victorians to the Present Day (Deborah Cohen)
- Mad Girl's Love Song, Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted (Andrew Wilson)
- Georgians Revealed, Life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain (ed: Moira Goff et al)
- The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)
- The Uncoupling (Meg Wolitzer)
- One Soufflé at a Time (Anne Willan)
- All Change (Elizabeth Jane Howard)
- The Exiles Return (Elisabeth de Waal)
- The Hotel (Elizabeth Bowen)
- Letters from Skye (Jessica Brockmole)
- Stoner (John Williams)
- The Curate's Wife (EH Young)
- Miss Mole (EH Young)
- Her Son's Wife (Dorothy Canfield)
- Persuasion (Jane Austen)
- Sweet Tooth (Ian McEwan)
- Enid Bagnold (Anne Sebba)
- Poppies for England (Susan Scarlett)
- Ella Minnow Pea (Mark Dunn)
- Where'd You Go, Bernadette? (Maria Semple)
- Pippa Passes (Rumer Godden)
- Heat Lightning (Helen Hull)
- Mary, Queen of Scots (Rosalind K Marshall)
- A Most Wanted Man (John le Carré)
- Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn)
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers)
- The Squire (Enid Bagnold)
- Tragedy at Law (Cyril Hare)
- Gossip (Beth Gutcheon)
- Patience (John Coates)
- The Tin Roof Blowdown (James Lee Burke)
- Bring Up the Bodies (Hilary Mantel)
- Barnaby Rudge (Charles Dickens)
- The Female Detective (Andrew Forrester)
- The Chessmen (Peter May)
- Mr Bridge (Evan S Connell)
- Mrs Bridge (Evan S Connell)
- Period Piece (Gwen Raverat)
- The Observations (Jane Harris)
- The Last Runaway (Tracy Chevalier)
- The Dinner (Herman Koch)
- The Thoughtful Dresser (Linda Grant)
- A Week in December (Sebastian Faulks)
- Love on the Supertax (Marghanita Laski)
- Half Blood Blues (Esi Edugyan)
Films 2012
- What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?
- Catimini (Behind Closed Doors)
- The Muppet Christmas Carol
- Liberal Arts
- Quartet
- Anna Karenina
- Shadow Dancer
- Moonrise Kingdom
- Woody Allen: A Documentary
- The Apartment
- Death Watch
- Le Havre
- Goodbye, First Love
- The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
- A Separation
- The Artist
- The Iron Lady
Books Read 2012
- The Glass Room (Simon Mawer)
- What Matters in Jane Austen? Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved (John Mullan)
- Harriet (Elizabeth Jenkins)
- The Sisters Brothers (Patrick deWitt)
- Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel)
- No Surrender (Constance Maud)
- In a Lonely Place (Dorothy B Hughes)
- An Artist of the Floating World (Kazuo Ishiguro)
- Hollywood Costume (Ed: Deborah Nadoolman Landis)
- The End of Your Life Book Club (Will Schwalbe)
- Life and Fate (Vasily Grossman)
- Jacob's Room (Virginia Woolf)
- Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)
- Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris ... (Leanne Shapton)
- Try Anything Twice (Jan Struther)
- Wilfred and Eileen (Jonathan Smith)
- Celia Birtwell (Celia Birtwell)
- Between the Acts (Virginia Woolf)
- Night and Day (Virginia Woolf)
- David Copperfield (Charles Dickens)
- The World's Wife (Carol Ann Duffy)
- The Blush (Elizabeth Taylor)
- Mrs Bridge (Evan S Connell)
- At the Jerusalem (Paul Bailey)
- The Expendable Man (Dorothy B Hughes)
- Into the Light: French and British painting from Impressionism to the early 1920s (Ed: Sam Smiles)
- The Best of Everything (Rona Jaffe)
- Cakes and Ale (W Somerset Maugham)
- The Lifeboat (Charlotte Rogan)
- Modern, The Modern Movement in Britain (Alan Powers)
- Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (Jeanette Winterson)
- A Card From Angela Carter (Susannah Clapp)
- At Mrs Lippincote's (Elizabeth Taylor)
- Freedom (Jonathan Franzen)
- A Bigger Message, Conversations with David Hockney (Martin Gayford)
- The Other Elizabeth Taylor (Nicola Beauman)
- The Lewis Man (Peter May)
- Abide with Me (Elizabeth Strout)
- Pure (Andrew Miller)
- Charles Dickens, A Life (Claire Tomalin)
- Half of the Human Race (Anthony Quinn)
- The Sense of an Ending (Julian Barnes)
- Hockney, the Biography (Christopher Simon Sykes)
- The Crowded Street (Winifred Holtby)
- Gillespie and I (Jane Harris)
- Oak (Stephen Taylor)
- Bricks and Mortar (Helen Ashton)
- The Paper Garden (Molly Peacock)
- The Odd Women (George Gissing)
- Terra Incognita, Travels in Antarctica (Sara Wheeler)
- Ghastly Business (Louise Levene)
Books Read 2011
- How to be a Woman (Caitlin Moran)
- The Blackhouse (Peter May)
- On Canaan's Side (Sebastian Barry)
- Lady Audley's Secret (Mary Elizabeth Braddon)
- Sky Burial (Xinran)
- Westwood (Stella Gibbons)
- On the Other Side: Letters to my Children from Germany 1940-46 (Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg)
- Brook Evans (Susan Glaspell)
- The Pattern in the Carpet (Margaret Drabble)
- The Christmas Truce (Carol Ann Duffy)
- The Last September (Elizabeth Bowen)
- Nemesis (Philip Roth)
- Our Spoons Came From Woolworths (Barbara Comyns)
- The Translation of the Bones (Francesca Kay)
- Some Tame Gazelle (Barbara Pym)
- A Place of Greater Safety (Hilary Mantel)
- The Pregnant Widow (Martin Amis)
- Manja (Anna Gmeyner)
- Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (Penelope Mortimer)
- The Finkler Question (Howard Jacobson)
- Doreen (Barbara Noble)
- The Dolls' House (Rumer Godden)
- My Ántonia (Willa Cather)
- Fidelity (Susan Glaspell)
- Hostages to Fortune (Elizabeth Cambridge)
- A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle)
- A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula Le Guin)
- A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan)
- Making Conversation (Christine Longford)
- The Mystery of Mrs Blencarrow (Mrs Oliphant)
- Farewell Leicester Square (Betty Miller)
- Miss Ranskill Comes Home (Barbara Euphan Todd)
- Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary (Ruby Ferguson)
- The Home-Maker (Dorothy Canfield Fisher)
- NY JS DB 62 (David Bailey)
- The Very Thought of You (Rosie Alison)
- The Good Soldier (Ford Madox Ford)
- The Surprising Life of Constance Spry (Sue Shephard)
- Flowers on the Grass (Monica Dickens)
- Brodeck's Report (Philippe Claudel)
- Stanley Spencer and the English Garden (Steven Parissien)
- The Group (Mary McCarthy)
- One Fine Day (Mollie Panter-Downes)
- The Tulip (Anna Pavord)
- Hancox: A House and a Family (Charlotte Moore)
- Alone in Berlin (Hans Fallada)
- A Homemade Life (Molly Wizenberg)
- Collected Poems (Philip Larkin)
- Excellent Women (Barbara Pym)
- So Long, See You Tomorrow (William Maxwell)
- All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)
- Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)
- Specimen Days (Michael Cunningham)
- Letters to Monica (Philip Larkin)
- The Whicharts (Noel Streatfeild)
- Decline and Fall (Evelyn Waugh)
- Dissolution (CJ Sansom)
- The Hare with Amber Eyes (Edmund de Waal)
- Fattypuffs and Thinifers (André Maurois)
- Earth & Heaven (Sue Gee)
- Miss Buncle's Book (DE Stevenson)
- The Berlin Novels (Christopher Isherwood)
- Mrs Parkington (Louis Bromfield)
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot)
- Just Kids (Patti Smith)
- Haunts of the Black Masseur, The Swimmer as Hero (Charles Sprawson)
- The Long Song (Andrea Levy)
- The Return of the Soldier (Rebecca West)
- Good Evening, Mrs Craven, The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes
- The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)
- Songs of Blue and Gold (Deborah Lawrenson)
- Wild Romance, The True Story of a Victorian Scandal (Chloë Schama)
- Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson)
- Children of the Archbishop (Norman Collins)
- Corrag (Susan Fletcher)
- Let the Great World Spin (Colum McCann)
Books read 2010
- The Owl Service (Alan Garner)
- Operation Heartbreak (Duff Cooper)
- South Riding (Winifred Holtby)
- Tamara Drewe (Posy Simmonds)
- A Game of Hide and Seek (Elizabeth Taylor)
- Summer Will Show (Sylvia Townsend Warner)
- The Outward Room (Millen Brand)
- Family Roundabout (Richmal Crompton)
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Shirley Jackson)
- The Lacuna (Barbara Kingsolver)
- Beside the Sea (Véronique Olmi)
- Frost in May (Antonia White)
- Troubles (JG Farrell)
- 44 Scotland Street (Alexander McCall Smith)
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Thornton Wilder)
- London Belongs To Me (Norman Collins)
- Waterlog, A Swimmer's Journey Through Britain (Roger Deakin)
- The Swimmer (John Cheever)
- The Mitfords, Letters Between Six Sisters (ed Charlotte Mosley)
- Tea with Mr Rochester (Frances Towers)
- The Hare with Amber Eyes (Edmund de Waal)
- Family Album (Penelope Lively)
- Because of the Lockwoods (Dorothy Whipple)
- Treasures of Time (Penelope Lively)
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson)
- The Help (Kathryn Stockett)
- The Lollipop Shoes (Joanne Harris)
- A Dance to the Music of Time (Vol 3: The Acceptance World, Anthony Powell)
- The Greengage Summer (Rumer Godden)
- Oleander, Jacaranda (Penelope Lively)
- I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith)
- The Millstone (Margaret Drabble)
- Hearts and Minds (Amanda Craig)
- Olive Kitteridge (Elizabeth Strout)
- George Eliot, The Last Victorian (Kathryn Hughes)
- Brooklyn (Colm Tóibín)
- The Go-Between (LP Hartley)
- Thank Heaven Fasting (EM Delafield)
- Illyrian Spring (Ann Bridge)
- The Way Things Are (EM Delafield)
- Old Friends and New Fancies (Sybil G Brinton)
- Impressionist Gardens (Clare Willsdon)
- In the Gardens of Impressionism (Clare AP Willsdon)
- The Peachgrowers' Almanac (Elaine di Rollo)
- Every Good Deed (Dorothy Whipple)
- The Virago Book of Food, The Joy of Eating (ed Jill Foulston)
- The Flower of May (Kate O'Brien)
- Mildred Pierce (James M Cain)
- The Life of Cardinal Wolsey (George Cavendish)
- Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel)
- I Know My Own Heart, The Diaries of Anne Lister, 1791-1840 (ed Helena Whitbread)
- Croc Attack (Assaf Gavron)
- Palladian (Elizabeth Taylor)
- The Thing Around Your Neck (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
- Don't Tell Alfred (Nancy Mitford)
- Love in a Cold Climate (Nancy Mitford)
- The Winds of Heaven (Monica Dickens)
- The Pursuit of Love (Nancy Mitford)
- A London Girl of the 1880s (MV Hughes)
- The Death of the Heart (Elizabeth Bowen)
- Their Finest Hour and a Half (Lissa Evans)
- The Widow Barnaby (Fanny Trollope)
- Flowers for Mrs Harris (Paul Gallico)
- Telling Tales (Alan Bennett)
- The Innocent (Ian McEwan)
- Changing My Mind (Zadie Smith)
- Death Comes for the Archbishop (Willa Cather)
- Chronicles, Volume One (Bob Dylan)
- A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
- The Painter of Signs (RK Narayan)
- The Matchmaker (Stella Gibbons)
- Travels with Charley (John Steinbeck)
- An Education (Lynn Barber)
- Late and Soon (EM Delafield)
- London's War, The Shelter Drawings of Henry Moore (Julian Andrews)
- Crossing to Safety (Wallace Stegner)
- Still Missing (Beth Gutcheon)
- Selected Diaries (Virginia Woolf)
- To Bed With Grand Music (Marghanita Laski)
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2 comments:
Yes and yes! I can't knit either but I can and did crochet. I think I made about 15 crochet blankets from when I retired up until a couple of years ago when I lost my crocheting mojo - which hasn't come back.
My daughter and I went to the exhibition at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge last week; it was insightful and thought provoking.
xxx
I keep meaning to treat myself to a day in Cambridge, Vronni - I'm desperate to visit Kettle's yard and last time I was there I spent too long in the Fitzwilliam and didn't make it!
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