How to be Topp, with cartoons by Ronald Searle Penguin has republished the classic Molesworth books from the 1950s. This new review asks: do they stand the test of time? Are they of another time and place, now past? As they say "the past is another country". |
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Canterbury Tales Retold, Still Classically Pious, Bawdy & Ribald Peter Ackroyd has produced an excellent new translation of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. He retains the classic medieval charm whilst making it easier for modern readers |
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Notwithstanding, Nostalgic Tales of Rural Idyll The author Louis de Bernières grew up in a Surrey village and the short stories in Notwithstanding reflect memories of rural idyllic childhood and English eccentricity. |
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Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's Only Novel Debauchery, Vanity, Pleasure and Cruelty in a Life of Eternal Youth. A century old yet this book echoes today's "Me" generation with its pursuit of perpetual beauty and self fulfilment without facing realities of life or accepting ageing. |
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The Uncommon Reader, Majestic Alan Bennett Tale The Uncommon Reader/em> is a gentle, wry, story in the established Bennett mould with an underlying comment on literacy and the British attitude to intellectual pursuits. |