Category: Creative Corner

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz (2016) I first came across Anthony Horowitz as the author of the Alex Rider books, which I read to my children as they grew up.  Noting that he had written a lot of TV scripts as well, I was drawn to watching Magpie Murders in 2022 and, subsequently, its follow-up, […]

The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V.E. Schwab  (2020)  Sometimes when you read a book, you do not want it to end. This is what happened when I read The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V.E. Schwab. The book wasn’t one I would normally have picked to read myself, but it was recommended […]

How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair (2023)  Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Safiya Sinclair grew up guarding herself against an ever-present threat. Her father, a volatile reggae musician and strict believer in a militant sect of Rastafari, railed against Babylon, the corrupting influence of the immoral Western world. Rastas were ostracised in Jamaica, and […]

Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter (2015)  Crow – from Ted Hughes’s renowned poetry collection Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow – is mythologised in Max Porter’s hybrid novella Grief is the Thing with Feathers. In a London flat, two young boys are processing the sudden death of their mother […]

Labyrinths By Jorge Luis Borges (1962) “The library will endure; it is the universe… We walk the corridors, searching the shelves and rearranging them, looking for lines of meaning amid leagues of cacophony and incoherence, reading the history of the past and our future, collecting our thoughts and collecting the thoughts of others.”  Jorge Luis […]

Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo (1831) A Romantic Gothic fantasy of 15C Paris. Forget the Disney travesty: this is an unforgettable immersive adventure, like a mash-up of Walter Scott, Lewis’s The Monk and François Villon. Claude, a brilliant young priest and alchemist, destroys himself and all around him over an unrequited and forbidden […]