This blog is now in hibernation! Please come and join me at my new home, Hispanic Britain, or, an Anglo-Hispanic Miscellany
Those of you who have been following our adventures on Twitter will know that this summer, the Booksonspain family moved from Merseyside to the Midlands. Being used to the multicultural port-city history of Hispanic Liverpool,* I wasn’t sure how much Hispanic history I’d find in the landlocked Midlands, but thanks to last week’s Kenilworth Weekly News and a […]
Those of you who follow me in my various electronic incarnations will know I don’t exactly keep a low electronic profile. You’ll find me more or less active on Twitter, Academia.edu, LinkedIn and on my own personal, departmental and (soon!) project websites, and I make an up-to-date online CV accessible via various portals. One of […]
In 2010, a novel by Eduardo Mendoza called Riña de gatos: Madrid 1936 won Spain’s prestigious Premio Planeta and in January 2011, I reviewed it on this blog. It’s quite a fun novel, and I rather enjoyed it, mostly thanks to Mendoza’s imaginative recreation of a slightly daffy Englishman’s perspective on the all-too-familiar events of the […]
Sometimes in the course of research, a neat little mystery just falls right into your lap and upsets all your best laid plans, and everything else gets put on hold until you’ve solved it. Or is that just me? (I always did have a problem with focus…) As those of you who follow me on […]
Ever wondered what Books on Spain sounds like? Well, here’s your chance to find out! In an experiment which may or may not go poof! at some point, here I am talking about the much-loved Victorian ballad “In Old Madrid” (Warning! Flugelhorns may be played! If you don’t like amateur musicians and poor sound quality, […]
Those of you with long memories may remember that nearly two years ago I published my second academic book, Writing Galicia into the World: New Cartographies, New Poetics, with Liverpool University Press (you can read about it here on the LUP website). The book explores the writings of and about Galicians in London and the wider world, by authors […]
It’s still January and so I think I am just about still in time to wish everybody a wonderful, joyful and book-filled 2013. Feliz aninovo, Feliz año nuevo and Happy New Year! This has been a quiet space for the last few months as I’ve been getting used to a new job and a new […]
So I was enjoying my annual appointment with the BBC series North and South (2004), based on Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1855 novel of the same name and starring (oh joy!) Richard Armitage as John Thornton (left) and poor Daniela Denby-Ashe, excised from this version of the DVD cover (because the BBC are nothing if not pragmatic in […]
The research for my current book, The Edwardians and the Making of a Modern Spanish Obsession, has turned up dozens of long-forgotten writers, commentators and artists who in their different ways, shaped the modern British view of Spain. Many of them were of Anglo-Spanish origin or had family connections that placed them at the heart […]
Remember Spain’s mega-blockbuster El tiempo entre costuras? Of course you do. It’s been inescapable in Spain for the last couple of years. I even reviewed the English translation over at Books4Spain, although I haven’t had the opportunity to watch the TV series yet. And its author, María Dueñas, hasn’t been slacking. Her second novel Misión olvido (Mission: Oblivion) […]
I was sad today to hear of the death of a former member of the Hispanic Studies department here at Liverpool, Sir Albert Sloman (1921-2012). Sir Albert was a precocious and visionary Hispanist who during his tenure as Gilmour Chair of Spanish (1953-62) transformed the department’s longstanding journal, the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, into one […]
So, back to The Holiday. As I think I might just possibly have mentioned before, the major priorities for the week, other than a touch of sightseeing and a generous sampling of sack, were swimming and reading, reading and swimming, swimming, reading, and swimming some more. And as you can see (left), the conditions were […]
I have just seen the very sad news that the ground-breaking writer and publisher Esther Tusquets has died in Barcelona at the age of 75. Tusquets was born a month after the start of the Spanish Civil War, and her earliest memories, as recounted in her first volume of autobiography Habíamos ganado la guerra (We had won […]
So as you know, I’m interested in bestsellers, especially (but not only) in their Spanish incarnation. In fact, I have a whole blog category about them. But the problem with bestsellers is that they tend to be really, really long and, as last spring’s reading marathon showed, they seem to be getting longer all the time. What […]
*brushes cobwebs off blog* Well hello again. Did everybody have a good Easter? Mine involved Scotland, snow, a(nother) massive Kindle binge, and a disappointingly small amount of chocolate. On the other hand I did spend a lot of time reading up about Sugar, Cod and Salt, (yes, I was on a commodities kick), so maybe there’ll be time […]
This was going to be a review of Tiempo de arena [Time of Sand], by Inma Chacón (above), which I picked up in Tenerife airport a couple of weeks ago and have been gripped by ever since. And then I finished the novel and did a bit of googling and discovered that it’s a sequel! A secret sequel! […]
Gosh. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? So, you’ll be pleased to know (I hope) that the post title is true. The blog and I are Not Dead Yet (look out – sound!); it’s just that various professional obligations have been keeping me busy and travelling – although my newly-acquired toy-cum-travelling-companion means that my books […]
I was very sad to hear today that Helen Forrester, author of the wonderful 1993 novel The Liverpool Basque, has died at the age of 92. . Of course, The Liverpool Basque isn’t among Forrester’s best-known works- in fact, this vivid and emotional hymn to a vanished community is rarely mentioned in accounts of her career. She made […]
One of the perks of researching a new project – in this case, From Cervantes to Sunny Spain – is that until you actually nail down the final structure, pretty much anything can count as research. And so, aided by my newly-beloved Kindle, I’ve been splashing around in the balmy waters of late Victorian and […]
Books on Spain 