Blogs
Guest author Sophy Layzell
Sophy Layzell is an author based in Somerset with a debut novel ‘Measure of Days’ released in August this year by the Book Guild. It makes the perfect Christmas stocking filler for teens! It’s topical, thought provoking and a good conversation starter for some pretty big subjects.
This book is the first...
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I Know You, Don’t I?
How well do we really know the people we have relationships with? How much do we tell them about our past? Would my version of my childhood bear any resemblance to my brother’s version of the same childhood? And what about my previous friendships and relationships? How much of the truth do I tell people today?
We all present a version of ourselves to the outside world. And that version of ourselves varies depending on who we’re with. The better we know people the more we reveal about ourselves.
Book Review: Square Haunting by Francesca Wade
Book Review: Square Haunting by Francesca Wade
I bought this book thinking it was going to be about the Bloomsbury set: Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Lytton Strachey etc. It was my own fault, I should have read the blurb more closely. It is, in fact, the biographies of five women who lived at one time or another in Mecklenburgh Square. Much of the “biography” is not, in fact, about their time in the square and to call them biographies is also misleading: they’re more sort of “potted histories” of some of their...
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Coleridge The Opium Eater
Coleridge: The Opium Eater
“I am fully convinced,” Coleridge wrote, “That to a person with such a stomach and bowels as mine, if any stimulus is needful, opium is incomparably better in every respect than any fermented liquor, nay, far less pernicious even than tea.”
In Coleridge’s time opium was the only painkiller available and there is no doubting Coleridge’s need for it: his illness was genuine. The swollen...
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Book Review: Those Who Are Loved by Victoria Hislop
Book Review: Those Who Are Loved by Victoria Hislop
What a disappointment this book was! I really enjoyed The Island by the same author and I know her books are highly thought of and well researched. The main problem with this one I think is that I couldn’t relate to the main character. I couldn’t see her in my mind or feel her thoughts and feelings. It’s the same with all the characters in this book: they lack depth and feeling. They’re almost caricatures. It’s as though she has wanted to tell a chunk of history...
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Coleridge in Love: The Two Saras
Coleridge in Love: The Two Saras
Samuel Taylor Coleridge had a theory on love
“Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.”
Love, he felt, was generous. “I can neither retain my happiness nor my faculties unless I move, live and love in perfect freedom.”...
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Becoming a Writer
Becoming a Writer
Sometimes I wonder how I got here. Not here in the world, I mean, here as a bona fide accepted writer. If you had told me twenty years ago that I would have published seven novels, had two more accepted by a publisher and was writing a tenth, I would never have believed you.
I’ve always known that I can write. It’s just something I can do. But I never thought I would be a published...
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Looking for things to do
Looking for things to do
So here we all are during the Coronavirus outbreak, trying to find things to do to occupy our time. Facebook is full of photos of culinary creations but how much longer will they be able to buy the ingredients? I don’t want this to be a blog about Coronavirus because there is enough discussion about that already. So what have I been doing to occupy my time? Well, of course, unlike others I am used to working from home: I still have books to edit and prepare for publication, I still write, I still post on social media to publicise my work. But there...Read More
2019 and all that…
2019 and all that...
So, it’s that time of year again, the time where I look back on my achievements for the last twelve months. Well, to start with, I notice I haven’t written a blog post for six months and the reason for this pretty much sums up my year and indeed the year before. Regular visitors to my website and friends will know that I suffer from a condition called Lupus. Systemic Lupus Erythematosus is an auto-immune condition in which the body’s immune system attacks healthy tissue in many parts of the body. Symptoms vary between people and may be mild to severe....Read More
Did Coleridge have Lupus?
Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, SLE or Lupus is a chronic, inflammatory, variable autoimmune disease of connective tissue, typically characterised by skin rash, fatigue, joint and muscle pain and often by disorders of the blood, kidneys, heart, lungs, and brain. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 –1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian who, with his friend William...
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