Economical with Fiction

Some things I’ve liked: Heroes, Sheroes, Greece, Food History and One End Street

A summer reading update

Sep 3 • 

E.J. Barnes

29

17

August 2025

Who is the Prince's Favourite?

Time for something completely different: the Brighton Pavilion, an old lady and the butler.

Aug 12 • 

E.J. Barnes

19

6

July 2025

Summer Reading under Apricot Skies

From midgy Scottish Highlands to 1930s Med by way of windswept Yorkshire Moors

Jul 22 • 

E.J. Barnes

31

34

Was Miss Jean Brodie so unlikely?

A strange brew of Edinburgh gentility, Mussolini and golf ... and an unlikely Trainspotting connection

Jul 8 • 

E.J. Barnes

21

10

June 2025

"Dull Janet Vaughan", Mrs Woolf and Mr Keynes

Bloomsbury, Equal Pay and a Pioneering Woman Scientist

Jun 17 • 

E.J. Barnes

19

16

May 2025

Nevil Shute's Chequer Board: love across the racial divide

Period piece, progressive preaching or old-fashioned morality tale?

May 21 • 

E.J. Barnes

11

Alison Uttley: the classic author more sinned against than sinning

Reading Alison Uttley’s Secret Places on the anniversary of her death

May 7 • 

E.J. Barnes

26

16

April 2025

Nevil Shute, the Careless People of Facebook and Fictional Women Entrepreneurs

Does old-fashioned fiction offer better role models for working women than in a 21st century memoir?

Apr 9 • 

E.J. Barnes

27

7

March 2025

Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice: potboiler or text book in feminist economics?

Potboiler or text book in feminist economics?

Mar 11 • 

E.J. Barnes

26

19

February 2025

Nevil Shute’s Ruined City: a northern town, the Great Depression, and a maverick merchant banker

In my last post I mentioned Ruined City by Shute as an unlikely companion novel to PG Wodehouse’s Big Money, with a very different style but some…

Feb 19 • 

E.J. Barnes

14

21

January 2025

Woolf, Keynes, Wodehouse, Shute … and other random things.

Some thoughts and recommendations

Jan 29 • 

E.J. Barnes

23

26

P.G. Wodehouse, Financial Shenanigans and the Great Depression: Big Money, Big Laughs?

Dreams and mothers, and now horned toads ….

Jan 10 • 

E.J. Barnes

25

9