The joy of short stories in these taxing times
From time to time, usually when things are quiet, the government brings on the dancing girls. David Cameron made Carol…
The online museums you’ll never want to leave
‘We don’t talk about the war.’ Yet those of my generation and older reference it daily. The coronavirus is an…
My isolation reading list
A psychiatrist once told me that it takes one’s subconscious about three weeks to catch up with a significant life…
Shakespeare knew a thing or two about self-isolation
‘Now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in To saucy doubts and fears.’ Shakespeare got there first, as ever, and…
Susan Hill: The brilliance of the NHS cancer service
Exactly 50 years ago I drove, for the first visit of many, across country to Aldeburgh in Suffolk, following the…
A Halloween short story: by The Woman in Black’s Susan Hill
‘This is a true story…’ Right. Only this time, it really is. There are no wails, whistling winds or taps…
Everything under the sun: The glory of garden centres
Don’t you just love garden centres? You have to be mad to go on a sunny Sunday morning in the…
Everyone hates Maggi Hambling’s ‘Scallop’ – but I love it
Benjamin Britten was adamant that he did not want any memorial sculpture of himself in Aldeburgh, the Suffolk coastal town…
The boy who dreams: A Christmas short story by Susan Hill
‘Wake up, boy! Wake up…’ My father was shaking me and I was confused because it seemed that I had…
Sarah Perry’s Melmoth is a great read, but not a great novel
‘What might commend so drab a creature to your sight, when overhead the low clouds split and the upturned bowl…
Susan Hill’s diary: The return of the eels
The swifts had not arrived by June, nary a one, though a Yorkshire Dales friend reported their return, and there…
Diary
I don’t know why party conferences no longer take place in Scarborough. As a child, I saw many an important…
Why I will never read Jane Eyre
Have you ever set your face against a book? This year sees Charlotte Brontë’s bicentenary and the novelist Tracy Chevalier…
A Gothic horror story of quicksands, riptides and rituals
This is a muddle of novel (originally published last year by Tartarus Press in a limited edition), though there are…
Susan Hill’s French notebook: My struggle to avoid local cuisine
An overnight stop on the Ile de Ré taken between the St Malo ferry and the Quercy, where we always…
Anne Tyler’s everyday passions
There was nothing remarkable about the Whitshanks. None of them was famous. None of them could claim exceptional intelligence, and…
The wonderful and unpredictable Candida Lycett Green
Remembering Candida Lycett Green
How the NHS fails new mothers on breast-feeding
Why isn’t there a proper service to show new nursing mothers how to feed their babies?
Don't let creative writing students read this book
One of these is by Lydia Davis, acclaimed American writer. One is not. They are whole pieces, by the way,…
Susan Hill short story: The Boy on the Hillside
Listen to Susan Hill read The Boy on the Hillside: [audioboo url=”https://audioboo.fm/boos/1816403-susan-hill-reads-the-boy-on-the-hillside”][/audioboo] The boy, Seth, stirred in his sleep. ‘Cold…’…
The Good Nurse, by Charles Graeber - review
Charles Cullen, an American nurse, murdered several hundred patients by the administration in overdose of restricted drugs. Hospitals should be…
The Breath of Night, by Michael Arditti
There is always meat in Michael Arditti’s novels. He is a writer who presents moral problems via fiction but is…
