George Norton
Playing, the Fool
Earlier this year, Julian Gough won the National Short Story Prize for ‘The Orphan and the Mob’, a gem of comic writing with the ingenuous Jude as its narrator. That piece serves as the prelude to Jude: Level One, and its very first sentence – ‘If I had urinated immediately after breakfast, the Mob would never have burnt down the Orphanage’ – neatly sums up just one of numerous disasters (and sometimes triumphs) Jude unwittingly causes throughout the novel.
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'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency
'We have all twenty-nine of her Barsetshire novels, and whenever a certain longing reaches critical mass we read all twenty-nine again, straight through.'
Patricia T O'Conner on her love for Angela Thirkell. (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad