Two shelves are written about together, it will become obvious why. The small Robert B. Parker collection is all about my dad. He loved…

More of the Earth’s Children series, the other one is on the wrong shelf and the final of the six is hardback so doesn’t fit. I confess that I have retaken some photos after rearranging some books, but not this shelf. There were some Fitzgerald in the photo from a…

I got my first camera just before travelling to Amsterdam on a hovercraft. I have some terrible photographs from that camera, dispelling any notion that talent could be genetic. Nevertheless, I tried again, later. I was eighteen and I had a Pentax SLR. I was squatting in an old office…

I wonder if every book we read leaves an imprint on our mind, whether we remember them or not. I grew to like Thomas Hardy, thank goodness, as I studied him twice for exams both at O and A level. His stories I prefer to read than watch, unlike Austen…

Kate Millet’s “The Loony Bin Trap” along with “An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness” by Kay Redfield Jamison (which I have lent to a friend, I often lend this one to friends, I’ve had to replace it twice) are the best books I have read about manic-depression…

All the little books live on a shelf especially made for them. In Linton, these were tucked into the crevices at the top of the library shelves in between the timber beams of my 1604 house. Here, Rick built me these. I love plywood as furniture which is something that…

All of these are work and work in progress except for Eddie Izzard’s autobiography. And I am so happy I have found it… Must read it! I am a fan. He makes me laugh and he makes me think differently about life. I admire him too, his marathons are as…

I’m glad I have a copy of the Female Eunuch even if I have only read parts of it. Germaine Greer lived or often stayed in a village near Linton, one day I was looking out the window and saw a dog running up the High Street and a woman…

Some of these are Rick’s some are mine. The garden is how we met. I had just moved into the High Street in Linton and was about to host two Great Danes for a month — Herbie, now mine, and Silas, Lori’s. I was suddenly the proud owner of a…