Chumley & Pepys On Books

Browsing my small record collection--hardly a collection anymore, more a remnant from youth having sold many during the late 80s to that won...

I am in the midst of reading Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 , and the latest warm-hearted offering by Alexander McCall Smith, but I now find mys...

The New Testament in Braid Scots rendered by William Wye Smith and published by Alexander Gardner in 1901, is not an uncommon or scarce tit...

Although trained in the laws of librarianship, I find I have never ordered my library according to any rules, even those of the thumb. Bind...

There is a favourite image I have always loved and keeps coming up in my thoughts with the approach of autumn: a hedge with a dusting of fal...

Nothing quite like a large pile of freshly laundered socks, to keep one's feet on the ground. So to speak. They promise autumnal promena...

I can see him walking amid the shadows. He breathes in the heady odours of buckram, Morocco, vellum and calf. There are manuscript pages ...

A recent bookish Internet pastime, an internet meme, which rather harkens back to the sortes virgilianae , had me reaching for the nearest b...

Author signatures and inscriptions seem rather common these days. Behind most title pages there are author tours, book signings, readings, t...

The recent passing of Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011 ) at the age of 96 has produced a florescence of memories, tributes and obituaries. Hi...

Part 1 “March, my muse! If you cannot fly, yet flutter.” - Byron, Don Juan xv, xxvii 1824. When U2's 360 Tour rolls into Montreal...

The Lyric Pieces of Edvard Grieg appeal to me greatly, and his No. 5, Drommensyn (Phantom) from his Book 7, Opus 62 expresses an ethereal qu...