This piece is a tribute to poet and writer Kate Llewellyn (1936…), and also a review of one of her early books, The Mountain, published in 1989. I have been reading it again in my Blue Mountains garden, surrounded by the fragrance of Daphne. It was the
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When my partner Rob and I were visiting New York some years ago we spent a rainy morning in Bloomingdale’s department store. It was serendipitous, because I found a pair of classic tweed pants I had searched for unsuccessfully in Sydney. I wear them to this day;
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The Bridge was published by Jonathan Cape in 1986. I found a copy recently in our local street library. This slim volume is a fictionalised account of one of British artist Philip Wilson Steer’s final painting trips to his beloved Sussex seaside town of Walberswick. It was
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What a delight Murder Under the Christmas Tree turned out to be. This book really was under my Christmas tree, a perfect gift to myself. It was first published in 2016, by Profile Books. As the title suggests, it is an anthology of ten short stories with a
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Shame on me for treating Pip Williams’ The Bookbinder of Jericho so badly. In my defense, it wasn’t in pristine condition when I picked it up from our local street library. I was reading it among the giant rhododendrons in the park at Blackheath, in the Blue
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I picked up a 2008 novel by Colleen McCullough in one of our local street libraries. It was titled The Independence of Mary Bennet. My first thought was how brave it was to continue the lives of the Bennet sisters after Jane Austen put down her pen
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CLENCH YOUR PEN AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT! Authors are constantly advised not to respond to negative reviews. I fully agree; you simply cannot argue with another person’s opinion. It is worth remembering that many literary classics suffered a hatchet job when first published. I particularly love
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Dr James Colthurst is perhaps best known for having been a close friend of the late Princess Diana. He was trusted implicitly by Diana , and acted as a go-between during one of the most difficult periods of her life. It was Colthurst who conveyed the secret tapes she
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