In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle introduces his own venture into the world of poetry At the beginning of 2020 I had little faith in this Government, but it turns out I was stupidly optimistic. Johnson (‘agent of chaos’, as I like to call him, […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle offers a taste of the literary trivia on offer in his new book about literary Britain Today, this blog turns five years old. I’d like to thank everyone who’s supported it since its beginnings on 1 December 2012, whenever you […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle gives us a taste of the interesting trivia to be found in his new book… I spent a lot of time looking into treacle earlier this year. Not literally. But, as it were, literarily. You see, there’s more to […]
In this special guest post, Caroline Taggart offers some little-known facts about punctuation marks, to mark the publication of her new book, The Accidental Apostrophe: … And Other Misadventures in Punctuation Did you know 1. The Victorians were crazy about hyphens? Jane Austen’s nephew Edward Austen Leigh, composing a biography of […]
Surprising firsts from the world of books We recently wrote a book, The Secret Library: A Book Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History, which aims to uncover the best hidden facts and stories about classic and not-so-classic works of literature. One of the most fascinating things we discovered was how […]