Category: Book reviews

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Full orchestra or string quartet? Two novels set in Victorian Scotland #photohistory #historical fiction #highlandclearances #scottishbooks

As soon as Sara Sheridan’s The Secrets of Blythswood Square crossed my radar I pounced on it as it’s a novel which springs from the exact scenario (and some of the characters) I drew on for In the Blink of an Eye. Coincidentally in the same week Sally Magnusson’s Music in the Dark was a … Continue reading Full orchestra or string quartet? Two novels set in Victorian Scotland #photohistory #historical fiction #highlandclearances #scottishbooks

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More than history: The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre by Dominic Smith #fictionalbiography #photohistory @bodleianlibs

When I visited A New Power, the Bodleian Library’s photo-history exhibition which ran earlier this spring, I was fascinated to learn how daguerreotype images were used to produce wood engravings which then became the basis for newspaper illustration, an application of the daguerreotype process of which I had been totally unaware, and so I turned … Continue reading More than history: The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre by Dominic Smith #fictionalbiography #photohistory @bodleianlibs

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Julia Margaret Cameron and The Glass House by Jody Cooksley #photohistory #PhotographyinFiction @theglasshousenovel

Julia Margaret Cameron Regular readers will know I’ve always had a soft spot for Julia Margaret Cameron whom I first encountered many years ago when working as a trainee in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. As a result, I took up an interest in photo-history and the following year I picked photography as a ‘specialist subject’ on … Continue reading Julia Margaret Cameron and The Glass House by Jody Cooksley #photohistory #PhotographyinFiction @theglasshousenovel

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‘Desire and the search for freedom in Victorian England’: The New Life by Tom Crewe @TomCrewe1

‘Truths needn’t depend on facts for their expression.’ The quote is from Tom Crewe’s author notes for his novel The New Life. It’s a book I think will be noticed for its unselfconscious depiction of sex between men, but I also admire it as an example of how history can be melded into create great … Continue reading ‘Desire and the search for freedom in Victorian England’: The New Life by Tom Crewe @TomCrewe1