by Administrator | Sep 19, 2020 | Quick Reads
In the rolling acres of Robin Hood country, along a mile and a quarter of tree-lined road, is Newstead Abbey, surrounded by woodland, lakes, waterfalls and walled gardens. The Augustinian priory was built by Henry II, between 1163 and 1173, to atone for the murder of...
by Administrator | Aug 29, 2018 | Readers & Writers
Dorothy Whipple’s debut, Young Anne, was first published in 1927 by Jonathan Cape, but has been republished in 2018 by Persephone Books. It is an accomplished first novel with a fascinating hint (as is the case with many debuts) of autobiography. An everyday,...
by Administrator | Aug 21, 2018 | Readers & Writers
I was so certain that High Wages was going to be a Cinderella-style story that I’d begun to formulate my review before I was even 100 pages in. ‘Who doesn’t love a good Cinderella tale?’ I was going to say. ‘With High Wages Whipple has taken Cinderella and relocated...
by Administrator | Aug 15, 2018 | Readers & Writers
Dorothy Whipple’s 1934 novel, They Knew Mr Knight, centres on a typical middle-class family in the Midlands in the late 1920s, the Blakes: ‘…the Blakes had been, like a happy country without history. They had lived in the Grove, holding together.’ Whipple examines...
by Administrator | Aug 8, 2018 | Readers & Writers
The house was called Greenbanks, but there was no green to be seen today; all the garden was deep in snow’. Dorothy Whipple’s 1932 novel (republished by Persephone Books in 2011) Greenbanks begins with a deceptive sense of calm. ‘Snow muffled the old house…and made it...
