International Women’s Day is marked on 8th March every year to celebrate the achievements of women and to raise awareness of equality issues and gender parity. Here at Jesmond Library we have many books which highlight the role of women through the ages and celebrate…
Last year in July 2020, when we could travel, we visited the RSPB’s Bempton Cliffs nature reserve in North Yorkshire. Every year from March to October the cliffs are host to 200,000 breeding seabirds Gannets, Puffins, Kittiwakes and Guillemots, all nesting on the chalk cliff…
Anyone visiting Liverpool in the early 1960’s would have found the epitome of ‘the dark satanic mills’. The city’s civic buildings were soot blackened, there were gaps where buildings had been, evidence of the intensive bombing the city had experienced in wartime. Two cathedrals, one…
Fleming looked up from the Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter, its gold-plated case gleaming as the last rays of the afternoon sun entered the open window of the study. Had someone come into the room at that moment they would have seen a strange aura surrounding…
As a child my imagination was the place I went to when I was alone, often making the countries depicted in my stamp collection the inspiration for imaginary journeys. Later many became real. Rivers have formed an important backdrop to my life. I was brought…
We’re hoping you’ll share some laughs with us here on April Fool’s Day. This year all the jokes come courtesy of JK Rowling’s young wizard and his friends. Q: On a scale from one to ten, how obsessed with Harry Potter are you? A:…
Houses which give books a sense of place I was in Waterstones after Christmas browsing as you do when you have gift cards burning to be spent in your wallet. In the new book section, I spied a book title which intrigued me ’Novel Houses’…
I like to try a book that’s been shortlisted for the Booker Prize – in 2018 in this case. Without giving too much away this is an updated version of a classic Greek tragedy. It manages to conjure a way of life on the rivers…
Rachel Kushner’s novel The Mars Room focuses primarily on a young mother named Romy Hall who is serving a life sentence in jail. Romy’s experiences are rendered in unflinching detail, tacking between the circumstances that led to her criminal conviction and the reality of life…
