John Dugdale
A Triple-Decker Tale
The Thistle and the Rose: Six Centuries of Love and Hate between Scots and English
By Allan Massie
John Murray, 305pp £18.99 order from our bookshop
The Hours, the novel (or maybe ‘novel’) with which Michael Cunningham made his name, was a triple-decker structure with a famous author and book at its centre. Narrative strands set in 1923, 1949 and the present were linked by Virginia Woolf, who was the protagonist in the 1923 section, and by her novel Mrs Dalloway and its theme of preparing for a party.
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