The Haunted Wood by Sam Leith is a survey of childhood reading from Aesop to J. K. Rowling. With a focus on British children’s literature, Leith examines how ideals of what childhood should look like have shifted over the years and how that has been reflected in books aimed at younger readers. Leith’s excellent pen portraits of various children’s authors show that the majority seem to have had some sort of major trauma in their life. Some like Roald Dahl are already well-known, but I didn’t know that E. Nesbit had had such a terrible time of it. The chapter about Harry Potter neatly shows how many homages to children’s books are contained in the series and Leith’s analysis of the delights of picture books are a particular joy. There are inevitable gaps even in a very long book, particularly because the topic of childhood reading is almost always discussed from a personal angle, but the broad span of The Haunted Wood makes it very pacy and enjoyably nostalgic to read. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Felicity Cloake
Books I Read in January 2026
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Books I Read in May 2025
One More Croissant for the Road by Felicity Cloake documents her gastronomic travels cycling 2,300 kilometres around France and sampling all the regional culinary delights the country has to offer. I enjoyed Red Sauce Brown Sauce which saw Cloake travelling around the UK in search of breakfast food, although that particular tour was frequently scuppered by Covid-19 restrictions, so it was nice to read a pre-pandemic travelogue this time. Cloake writes delicious descriptions of the food she consumes, but there are plenty of stressful moments too, including train strikes, punctures, torrential rain and erratic opening hours. The Pause Café sections about the history of French food were very interesting and Cloake is an enthusiastic Francophile who pokes gentle fun at French idiosyncrasies while developing a system for ranking croissants with the seriousness that the task deserves. I am looking forward to reading Cloake’s new book Peach Street to Lobster Lane about American cuisine.
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Books I Read in April 2023
Red Sauce Brown Sauce by Felicity Cloake is a travel memoir which documents the Guardian food writer’s “British breakfast odyssey” cycling around the UK in search of all the components of breakfast food from sausages in Glamorgan to potato bread in Northern Ireland to jam in Tiptree. Hampered by persistent hamstring injuries and COVID-19 restrictions which were still in place in the summer of 2021 when Cloake embarked on the trip, it’s a shame that some of her plans had to be abandoned, but a publisher’s deadline is clearly something that can’t be pushed back. As well as the usual everyday suspects such as eggs, bacon and Weetabix, I learned a lot about more esoteric regional delicacies such as laverbread, stotties, soda farls and pikelets. At the end of each chapter, Cloake poses the “red sauce or brown sauce” question to everyone she meets along the way on her journey… for me, it will always be ketchup. I will certainly seek out Cloake’s book ‘One More Croissant for the Road’ about her culinary travels in France. Continue reading
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