Just read a brilliant short story by Muriel Spark

It is called ‘Bang Bang You’re Dead’ and I point blank refuse to say what it’s about because it is one of those stories that packs a lot into a few short pages, and deserves to be read. Analysing it here would spoil it for anyone who wants to read it later.

I think Penguin reissued some stories by Spark recently. I wonder if this one is included or not? Apparently ‘Bang Bang You’re Dead’ was first published in 1961.

Jane Austen in Chawton

Two hundred years ago, in July 1809, Jane Austen moved to Chawton village in Hampshire, where her brother had inherited the local manor house from a cousin. Jane lived with her mother in a cottage on the estate, now the Jane Austen House Museum. Here, she revised the manuscripts of ‘Sense and Sensibility’, ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Northanger Abbey’, and wrote ‘Mansfield Park’, ‘Emma’ and ‘Persuasion’.

I am not sure whether to be surprised it is as much as two centuries since Jane Austen’s work began to be published, or surprised that it is only two centuries. Her work has had a massive influence on literature and on attitudes to life in these parts. And she is big in Bollywood too. What next? Well, it may be something she’d hate… but if she was around today, who knows?

Question about a writers ‘movement’

Does anyone reading this know who the Romantics were? Or why they were called that?

This is WITHOUT Google, without any other online search or phone-a-friend, just what you KNOW. I am just as interested in wild guesses as I am in the truth. Who you think they are? Or might be? If you cannot hazard names, hazard a century or a theory about how best to describe them. Imagine there is a huge prize to motivate you (there isn’t).

Actually there could be a prize, will have a rummage and make an offer tomorrow…Answers in a comment box please. Anonymity guaranteed if wished – just say Not for publication in your comment. Ta very muchly…

Insomnia and lit crit

Could not sleep last night. A writer whose work I like sent me a present of a lit crit book maybe a year ago, and about 3am I found it and started reading it. It was about 4, I think, before I stopped. Maybe next time I should try maths — could work faster, on the sleep-inducing front.