David Kynaston
Saturday Specials
Dear Mr Bigelow: A Transatlantic Friendship
By Frances Woodsford
Chatto & Windus 383pp £15.99
‘We all love the little boy,’ noted Frances Woodsford in November 1952, ‘but whenever I have seen the whole family on the screen, the Duke of Edinburgh is invariably looking after his daughter, and leaving Charles severely alone. I can imagine he doesn’t allow his son to get spoiled, but perhaps he thinks a father should spoil his daughter a bit.’
This suggestive observation comes from one of Woodsford’s ‘Saturday Specials’ – a series of weekly letters that between 1949 and 1961 she wrote to Commodore Paul Bigelow, an aged American widower living in Bellport, Long Island. Woodsford herself was middle-aged, unmarried and living in Bournemouth, where in addition
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
It wasn’t until 1825 that Pepys’s diary became available for the first time. How it was eventually decrypted and published is a story of subterfuge and duplicity.
Kate Loveman tells the tale.
Kate Loveman - Publishing Pepys
Kate Loveman: Publishing Pepys
literaryreview.co.uk
Arthur Christopher Benson was a pillar of the Edwardian establishment. He was supremely well connected. As his newly published diaries reveal, he was also riotously indiscreet.
Piers Brendon compares Benson’s journals to others from the 20th century.
Piers Brendon - Land of Dopes & Tories
Piers Brendon: Land of Dopes & Tories - The Benson Diaries: Selections from the Diary of Arthur Christopher Benson by Eamon Duffy & Ronald Hyam (edd)
literaryreview.co.uk
Of the siblings Gwen and Augustus John, it is Augustus who has commanded most attention from collectors and connoisseurs.
Was he really the finer artist, asks Tanya Harrod, or is it time Gwen emerged from her brother’s shadow?
Tanya Harrod - Cut from the Same Canvas
Tanya Harrod: Cut from the Same Canvas - Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John by Judith Mackrell
literaryreview.co.uk