When browsing through a newspaper, I’m always drawn by articles about love and romance, whether love stories or commentary on the current state of romance in the country. So this week I was intrigued to read reports in the national press of a survey commissioned by Match.com to investigate the cost of dating. According to […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Regular readers of my blog will know that I’m passionate about music across many different genres, and I often use music as an inspiration for my writing. So I was delighted, this week, to read an article in The Huffington Post on ‘lit-pop’ – songs inspired by literature. The fourteen songs profiled refer to works […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This week journalist Jonathan Freedland, who writes thrillers under the pen name Sam Bourne, has published an article called ‘Why the Facts Really Count in Fiction’. In the article, he explains that he takes great care in his writing to ensure that his books are as factually correct as possible. Author Barbara Trapido has also […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Did you watch any of the Queen’s jubilee celebrations on the television? I enjoyed watching the flotilla, the fireworks after the concert and the coverage of the National Service of Thanksgiving; but what most drew my attention was the television footage of the Royal Family from many years ago. One film in particular caught my […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
With the Queen on most people’s minds, the Huffington Post recently published a list of favourite queens from literature. They included three queens from Alice in Wonderland, Tatiana from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Guinevere from the many stories of King Arthur, Lady Macbeth from Macbeth, the White Witch from the Narnia series, the Faerie Queen from Edmund […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
A carriage ride around verdant Hyde Park. A stroll along the Thames at dusk, admiring the misty lights of the Houses of Parliament. A coffee in a pavement cafe in Covent Garden, watching opera singers vie with circus performers for the public’s attention. A wander around the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate, the Victoria and […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
When does the urge to be a writer commence? The nights, as a young toddler, that you sit on your parent’s knee and gaze at the scenes in a picture book while the words you hear spoken twist and gallop and soothe all around you? The time you first hold a pencil and, without guidance, […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
If you’ve been following book news in the past week you’ll have read about erotic romance ebook publisher Total-E-Bound’s new initiative: giving classic romance novels an ‘erotic makeover’. Inspired by the success of the Fifty Shades series, the publisher has decided to add some spice to several classic titles. The books, which are beloved of […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
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Twenty-five years ago this month the film Dirty Dancing was released in cinemas. A low-budget movie made by a new studio and with no stars in the lead roles (hard to believe now, but Jennifer Gray and Patrick Swayze were relatively unknown before the film), it has gone on to earn over $214 million, has […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
