A New York Times Bestselling AuthorA CBA Bestseller Lynne Truss debuted in America as a guffaw-inducing grammarian with her #1 New York Times bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves, but her UK audience has known her for years as a critically acclaimed novelist and columnist. Going Loco features a criti...
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. Stella Gibbons turns her attention instead on having a good time and on romance, penning a rusticated novel of manners in which Flora Poste, a highly educated and sophisticated young lady from the London high society sets out to clear up the muddle of Col...
To my mind, the word “monologue” conjures up two possibilities. The first is a droning, nondescript, shadowed face. The other is some over-made-up and overly dramatic individual, unconcerned with masking anything, shouting – and sometimes spitting – at me. Taken from the series broadcast on Rad...
“If you take hyphens seriously,” it said, “you will surely go mad.” And it’s true. Just look how the little blighter escaped all previous categorisation until I had to hunt it down on its own for this teeny-weeny, hooked-on, after-thought-y chapter. It’s a funny old mark, the hyphen. Always has b...
The main trouble is that its hero, Frank Bascombe, works from home. True, he writes magazine profiles of big-name American football stars, but (oh my God) did I mention this? He works from home.True, he also embodies a recognisable anomie, and has a few childlike traits that make him unpopular wi...
What he failed to notice, however, was that while he grew sticky with excitement about getting his hands on the heads of these Freshwater people, most of these Freshwater people were pretty keen to get their hands on him. ‘He is Lancelot!’ exclaimed Mrs Cameron to her husband, later. ‘I shall pos...
The compartment smelled of ancient dust, the window was smeary as though painted with yellow glue, and moreover, with ten minutes till departure time, the worn and crusty seats were filling up with alarming speed. Michelle, unaccustomed to the brusqueness of Intercity etiquette, flinched and clen...
The long and short of it is that I have heard of what happened at Lighthouse Cottage, and much as I have resisted becoming involved in the story of the two individuals known as Roger and the Captain, I find that I am now in it absolutely up to my neck. I have had to leave my house! I’ve had to mo...
To me, it is a sort of binge. Confronted with a mere two weeks of fantastic tennis on the TV, I approach it with the same gimme-gimme intensity as the competition winner allowed three minutes to fill a shopping trolley with free food, or the fat boy attempting a speed record for the consumption o...
Scene One: Tina is dressing for dinner; huffs and puffs as she puts on a frock, tights, shoes etc. Remote boat engine noise. Some sort of on-board TV documentary It’s a terrible thing to say, and I know Pat will go, [laughs] “Ooh, hark at Tina,” the way she’s done since we were five years old – “...