Category: Helen Rappaport
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OK here is a round up of my current reading having got through a shedload of slightly disappointing reads. After the Romanovs – Helen Rappaport. I am a great fan of Helen's books, I have most of them on my shelves and as well as being impeccably researched, they are also immensely readable and she…
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I have two main titles I wish to highlight today, both are recently published biographies of two different women, but both linked in a curious way. First up is Mary Seacole by Helen Rappaport. I am a great admirer of Helen's writing having read several of her titles. Her books on the Romanovs and, in…
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At the moment there is a hashtag on Twitter #beathebacklog as a whole slew of book lovers are trying to get their To be Read backlog reduced. Nobody thinks for one moment that it is ever going to happen but we thought we would see if we could get it down a bit. I have…
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I have had a very busy year being much more involved with family and grandchildren, helping move, childcare and visiting and, hence, for the first time in over five years I have read less than 200 books. I am at my lowest with the total for 2014 being 164. I also find that this year…
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And now we come to Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, the Four Sisters of the title. I have mentioned in my first post how they led a stifling existance due mainly to the isolation imposed upon them by their mother, which many saw as cruel. 'Poor things! ….. what a way to bring up imperial…
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In the early to mid sixties I worked at Highgate Library. I was a teenager at the time and have recently realised that during those years I read three books which started me off on a life time's reading. One was Victoria RI by Elizabeth Longford, the second was A Man of Sorrow by Locke…
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Last Friday was my birthday and it seems I have only now recovered from it all. I have reached the age of 67 which is a pretty scary thought and though I am 37 in my mind, five days of gallivanting and having fun put me in bed yesterday while I recovered from my aching…
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Well it is all over and what a simply wonderful weekend it turned out to be. Meg Reid, the Festival Director, can sleep soundly in her bed now sure in the knowledge that her idea of starting off a book festival in the lovely little seaside town of Felixstowe has become a reality, and a…
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Now a book about photography and its discovery might not strike you as being frightfully interesting or exciting and in the hands of another author or authors, you might be right. However, when one of the co-writers of Capturing the Light is Helen Rappaport, one of my favourite historians and a writer who has the…
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The first thing I have to say about the excellent three part documentary on the above, shown on the BBC this week, is that Fiona Bruce is nowhere to be seen. So I was prepared to like it for that reason alone even if no other…. You know my feelings and thoughts by now on…
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This simply splendid book about the death of Prince Albert and how it shaped the monarchy was my Book of the Year 2011. I reviewed it here. Delighted to say that this is now available in paperback (love the cover) so if anybody was holding back on purchasing then please do grab a copy as…
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Last year Helen Rappaport's book Magnificent Obsession was my book of the year. Before that I had read her book on Ekaterinburg and now I am reading something completely different. The story of Madame Rachel, a con woman and a fraudster who set herself up as a cosmetician and perfumier and acquired a long client…
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Today we celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens one of my all time favourite writers. I am simply delighted to have as guest blogger, Helen Rappaport, historian and writer and author of my Book of 2011, Magnificent Obsession, who spent her childhood in Kent with all its associations with The Inimitable and…
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My book of the year which trounced the rest of the competition as soon as I started to read it, is Magnificent Obsession; Victoria, Albert and the Death that Changed the Monarchy by Helen Rappaport. At the end of my review of Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin I was positive that this would be my…
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I love Prince Albert. For so many years portrayed and seen as a dour, miserable, straight-laced Germanic bore, it is a delight to me that over the past twenty or so years, various biographies have put the record straight. He had had an idyllic childhood in Rosenau with his brother Ernst spending their time ‘walking,…