A Pin’s Fee, by Peter de Polnay (1947)
I’ve probably seen Peter de Polnay’s name on the spine of books as long as I’ve been going to used bookstores, but it was only two years ago that I actually read one of his …
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Angry Man’s Tale, by Peter de Polnay (1939)
At a time when many first-time novelists bemourn publishers’ reluctance to back their works with advertisement, Alfred A. Knopf’s half-page ad for Peter de Polnay’s Angry Man’s Tale (1939) stands as righteous refutation. Look at …
Blood and Water, by Peter de Polnay (1975)
Every year or so, I reach for one of Georges Simenon’s “straight” novels–those bitter human comedies, such as The Rules of the Game, that he turned out as regularly as his Maigrets, usually spending under …
A Dozen Views of the Fall of France, June 1940
I recently spent the equivalent of two days listening to the audiobook version of The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 William L. Shirer’s massive follow-up to …
I Never Kissed Paris Goodbye, by Madeleine Masson (1978)
I don’t remember how many years ago I bought this book, but it sat on the shelf long enough to have escaped my notice until I took it down to kill a few minutes while …
Don’t Keep the Vanman Waiting by Adam de Hegedus (1944)
This is a guest post by the novelist and childrens’ book author Eric Brown ‘The summer of nineteen-thirty-nine was a thoroughly rotten one.’ So opens Don’t Keep the Vanman Waiting, a chapter of autobiography by …
The Mystery of Jessamy Morrison: Solved
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece titled “The Mystery of Jessamy Morrison” that surveyed four of the six novels published between 1963 and 1972 by a writer of that name. Aside from …
English as a Second Language: Following in Conrad’s Footsteps
Reviews of Selina Hasting’s new biography of Sybille Bedford, who was born Sybille Aleid Elsa von Schoenebeck in Charlottenburg, Germany and forced to live as an exile starting in the late 1930s due to her …