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Brompton Oratory, a hot lunch-time in July, a baby being received into the Catholic Church and Catholic upper-crust society; dressed-up, a group stands round the font. Otherwise the building’s almost empty, save a scattering of oddballs dotted round the nave, the occasional stray tourist fleeing from the sun. A little girl in blue and…
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Subtitle: The Passion of the Last Tsar and Tsarina Rating: **** (4/5) Published: St. Martin’s Press, 2011 Format: Hardcover Genre: Nonfiction Source: Personal Collection I have read a number … Source: Alix and Nicky by Virginia Rounding
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When I was working on my last book Alix and Nicky: The Passion of the Last Tsar and Tsarina, I initiated a form of “crowd-funding” to help me finish it, and was fortunate that this met with a good reception from a number of friends who, in return for a contribution of £50, received the…
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When Anna came down for breakfast on Tuesday 12th May, she found the room more crowded than was usual for half past eight. She showed her card marked ‘Buffet’ to the woman on duty, helped herself to fruit juice and looked for an empty table. She had to go right over by the wall to…
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“Try and think about the absence of God, and do realise that before you can knock at the door – and remember that it is not only at the door of the Kingdom understood in the general way, but that Christ really says ‘I am the door’ – before you knock at the door, you…
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Each day that I write this blog (which I cannot promise will be every day), I will select a word encountered in the last 24 hours and see where it takes me. Today’s word is “invisible”, as in “The use of invisible fencing to allow the grazing of the area will be demonstrated.” This comes…
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Something I’ve noticed that many writers do – particularly those for whom English is not their first language – is pepper their essays, dissertations and articles with words they imagine will strengthen their argument, but which actually tend to have the reverse effect, particularly if the peppering is too liberal or the words are quite…
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As promised, here is my poem about Ivor Gurney Beside the son of his dearest friend, Their names linked still in death, A Celtic cross and an inscription to Ivor Gurney: a lover and maker of beauty. In low land between Cotswold and Malvern, A place he might have chosen, He knows the silence after…
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The wonderful concert I went to last week at The Hall, St Botolph without Bishopsgate, as part of the Song in the City series, reminded me of how significant Ivor Gurney is in the pantheon of 20th-century English composers. His songs are gems, in the tradition of earlier composers such as John Dowland – succinct,…
Virginia Rounding: Author, editor, proofreader, indexer 