Ruskin Park by Rory Cellan-Jones is the former BBC journalist’s memoir about how his parents met in the 1950s. His mother, Sylvia, was separated from her first husband and worked at the BBC as a secretary. She had a brief affair with James Cellan Jones, a producer who was 15 years her junior. When Sylvia found out she was pregnant at the age of 42, James abandoned her and didn’t meet his son until 23 years later. Two decades after her death in 1996, Cellan-Jones sifted through 60 years’ worth of his mother’s correspondence to piece together what happened at the time of his birth and why. The letters present both a social history of mid 20th-century Britain and a gripping personal story about the challenges of being a single parent in a south London council flat in the 1960s. Readers who enjoy family memoirs in the vein of Romany and Tom by Ben Watt will definitely enjoy ‘Ruskin Park’ which is a moving and compassionately written book.
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Tag Archives: Sarah Perry
Melmoth by Sarah Perry
‘Melmoth’ by Sarah Perry tells the story of Helen Franklin, a British woman in her forties working as a translator in Prague where she has lived for some twenty years in self-imposed exile. Her friend Karel has come into possession of the papers of fellow scholar Josef Hoffman who has recently been found dead in the National Library. Among the papers is a manuscript which tells of Melmoth the Witness, an obscure legend in which, according to superstition, Melmoth travels through the ages, persuading those wracked with guilt to wander alongside her on a journey of eternal damnation. Helen’s initial scepticism of the legend wanes when Karel disappears and she is forced to confront the reasons why she cannot forgive herself for the outcome of events in her own past.
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The Wellcome Book Prize Longlist 2017
The Wellcome Book Prize is awarded to a fiction or non-fiction book about health or medicine. Since its launch in 2009, there has been a shortlist of six books but this year, there is a longlist of twelve books for the very first time. The nominated books which were announced today are:
- How to Survive a Plague by David France
- Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
- When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
- Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal (translated from the French by Jessica Moore)
- The Golden Age by Joan London
- Cure by Jo Marchant
- The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss
- The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
- A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford
- Miss Jane by Brad Watson
- I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
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The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
‘The Essex Serpent’ by Sarah Perry tells the story of Cora Seaborne, a keen amateur naturalist and recent widow who moves to Colchester in the 1890s with her servant-companion Martha and son Francis and meets the local vicar Reverend William Ransome. There are rumours that the mythical Essex Serpent which once stalked the Blackwater estuary has been spotted again near the coastal village of Aldwinter, and some mysterious deaths have sent the local residents into panic. Cora and Will are both sceptical of the rumours surrounding the return of the beast but for very different reasons with Cora believing the creature could be an undiscovered species whereas Will’s concerns lie in his parishioners’ apparent lack of faith. Yet despite these differences, they start to form a close and intense bond. Continue reading
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