All posts by Bob Fowke

News

The Glasgow Wheelers

Excellent review of The Glasgow Wheelers in The Herald (Scotland):

“One such club that has played a significant part in Scottish sporting history is Glasgow Wheelers, a cycling club that’s produced more world-class athletes than many others could even dream of.

The history of the club has been documented in a fascinating and incredibly well-researched book called: ‘The Glasgow Wheelers; A Scottish Cycling History.’ This book such a vital read. And it’s not only worth reading for cycling enthusiasts, but also for people like me who are interested in Scottish sport but are entirely ignorant of the history of a club  (…)which has played such a massive part in the sporting success of this country over the past century.

Susan Egelstaff, The Herald, 20 August 2023
https://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/23733049.scepticism-remains-effect-mega-events-nation/

 

News

ASLE-UKI Book Prize Shortlist 2023

Michael McCarthy’s latest book, Fergus the Silent, published by YouCaxton in 2021, has been short-listed for the ASLE (Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment) Book Prize, Best Work for Creative Writing. We’ll hear the results shortly.

Book Review

Move Like Water, Daily Mail

Move Like Water by Hannah Stowe (Granta £16.99, 272pp), review by Natasha Poliszczuk

‘An elegant, enthralling memoir that will do for the ocean what Katherine May did for winter (Wintering) and Alice Vincent did for gardening (Rootbound).’

 

 

East India Company

Sophia Plowden, British Library

This guest post on the Asian and African Studies blog of the British Library by Katherine Butler Schofield introduces her recent talk at the British Library on Sophia Plowden, Khanum Jan, and ‘Hindustani airs’, now available as a podcast “The Courtesan and the Memsahib: Khanum Jan meets Sophia Plowden at the Court of Lucknow”. It is accompanied by a collection of images forming a visual record. The podcast, produced by Chris Elcombe with music by harpsichordist Jane Chapman, is part of a series of presentations at the British Library in 2018 for Katherine’s British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship programme “Histories of the Ephemeral: Writing on Music in Late Mughal India”.  Special thanks are due to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, for permission to reproduce the images below from MS 380, Mrs Plowden’s beautiful collection of North Indian song lyrics and tunes.

Link to the blog:
https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2018/06/sophia-plowden-khanum-jan-and-hindustani-airs.html

Book Review

Palatine, Daily Mail, Roman Emperors from Augustus to Vespasian

Review of Palatine by Peter Stothard, former editor of The Times, in the  Daily Mail:

‘Palatine tells the story of Rome between Augustus, the first Roman emperor who died in 14 AD, and the military hero Vespasian, whose rule from 69 to 79 AD brought a long period of political stability and financial expansion. With vivid prose in short, dynamic chapters, Stothard also covers the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, Jewish unrest at the time of Christ and the invasion of Britain, but this extraordinarily well-researched, exciting book is more a tale of increasing wealth and prosperity rather than war, as well as corruption, greed, gluttony and desire.’

Link to review:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-11996525/New-book-reveals-rulers-Rome-tended-meet-exceedingly-sticky-ends.html

Book Review, News

George Orwell Daily Mail

Review of a revised biography of George Orwell by D.J. Taylor in the Daily Mail:

‘Taylor was already the acknowledged expert on George Orwell, thanks to his Whitbread Award-winning Orwell: The Life in 2003. Since then, he has discovered new letters written by Orwell and his first wife, Eileen, stashed away in various attics, hinting at previously unknown interludes, such as his possible extra-marital love affairs with his old flame Brenda Salkeld, to whom he continued to write passionately long after his marriage, and with the novelist Inez Holden — hence this New Life, 120 pages longer than the first one.’

Self-Publishing town

Shropshire’s Covid Year

 

We’re planning a book based on the personal anecdotes of Shropshire people during the Coronavirus epidemic – tales of lock-down and of resiliance, of survival. to be published in March 2021.

Shropshire’s Covid Year will not be about medical disaster, sadness or bereavement although there’s been some of that; we’re looking for tales of triumph over adversity, of humour and of how some people found ways to get by. We’re talking stolen kisses, escaped otters, love among the bike sheds, ghost choirs, badgers around the brazier, football by moonlight.

The editorial committee is holding its first meeting on Thursday and we’ll be looking for submissions shortly.

Book Review

Self isolation

Self isolation and writing sound almost like a tautology but writers are among the most gregarious of creatures. A couple of hours intense concentration then down the pub or the cafe or some other location where we can meet people. Perhaps the solution, now that a solitary life is imposed on us, is to have two books on the go, one a novel or some such very creative endeavour and another that depends more on research and organisation of the material. Here at YouCaxton we’ll be happy to offer advice and support.