Norfolk

Jonathan Raban’s last hurrah

16 September 2023 9:00 am

Aged 69, the travel writer had a stroke and spent his last 20 years as a hemiplegic – and writing this memoir of his father’s life intertwined with snapshots of his own

I knew I was right about private schools

2 September 2023 9:00 am

The Hunstanton Lawn Tennis Tournament has become an annual fixture in the Young household. Known as ‘Wimbledon-on-Sea’, the week-long competition…

Mitfordian mischief: Darling, by India Knight, reviewed

22 October 2022 9:00 am

It takes chutzpah to tackle a national treasure as jealously loved and gatekept as Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love.…

The real Norfolk: Stewkey Blues, by D.J. Taylor, reviewed

28 May 2022 9:00 am

D.J. Taylor is a Norfolk native who, un-usually, has stayed put. These stories, written during the pandemic, are all set…

My 46 days on the road with John Woodcock

24 July 2021 9:00 am

Although it was a miracle that he survived until a few weeks before his 95th birthday, the death of John…

Norfolk may be flat, but it’s never boring

10 August 2019 9:00 am

Francis Pryor claims he would be a rich man if every person who told him that the Fens were ‘flat…

Postcard from the edge: The Rings of Saturn (Shingle Street — unused photograph), 1994

From haunted to haunter: the afterlife of W.G. Sebald

18 May 2019 9:00 am

East Anglia, the rump of the British Isles, has inspired a disproportionate number of writers: Robert Macfarlane, Daisy Johnson, Mark…

‘The Paston Treasure’, detail of a little girl, unknown artist, Dutch School, c. 1663

A historical whodunnit that lets you into a forgotten world: The Paston Treasure reviewed

1 September 2018 9:00 am

In 1675 Lady Bedingfield wrote to Robert Paston, first Earl of Yarmouth. Never, she exclaimed, had she seen anything so…

The face of a film: Charlotte Rampling is hypnotic in ‘45 Years’

A film in which nothing happens — yet everything happens: 45 Years reviewed

29 August 2015 9:00 am

Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years stars Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay as a long married couple whose relationship is disturbed by…

A John Craske painting from the Sylvia Townsend Warner Collection

The self-taught maritime artist who transcends ‘naïve’ cliché

4 April 2015 9:00 am

In the manner of Richard Holmes’s Footsteps, Julia Blackburn’s story of John Craske is as much autobiography as biography, as…

I’ve spent years in war zones. And the most terrifying moment of my life just happened in Norfolk

11 October 2014 9:00 am

I’ve spent years in conflict zones. But the scariest thing that’s happened to me involved two bull terriers on a Norfolk beach

To be astonished by nature, look no further than Claxton

11 October 2014 9:00 am

Mark Cocker is the naturalist writer of the moment, with birds his special subject. His previous book, Birds and People,…

Not quite romantic fiction, or literary fiction, or commercial fiction – but still quite good

14 June 2014 8:00 am

Elements of Raffaella Barker’s new novel, her eighth for adults, suggest commercial fiction: a narrative that oscillates between the aftermath…