Mick Brown
Sky Ladder
Before setting out on his journey to Mount Kailas in Tibet, the most sacred of the world’s mountains, holy to one-fifth of the earth’s people, Colin Thubron meets a monk named Tashi in Kathmandu who instructs him to dedicate his pilgrimage ‘to those who have died’ so that ‘they will accrue merit’.
‘They will?’ Thubron asks doubtfully. ‘Can you help the dead?’ His residual Anglicanism, he notes, offers no intercession or opportunity of consolation for those who have passed. ‘The dead were beyond reach or comfort.’
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'Thirkell was a product of her time and her class. For her there are no sacred cows, barring those that win ribbons at the Barchester Agricultural.'
The novelist Angela Thirkell is due a revival, says Patricia T O'Conner (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad
'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