Sylvia Townsend Warner
Top 10 forests in fiction | Zoe Gilbert
Daphne du Maurier, Mervyn Peake and Angela Carter are among the authors enchanted by these shadowy borderlands of civilisation
Zoe Gilbert
15, Jun, 2022 @11:00 AM
Matrix by Lauren Groff review – a brilliant nun’s tale
Visionary leader, queer lover, 12th-century writer … the life of Marie de France is triumphantly reimagined in an assertively modern novel about female ambition and creativity
Alexandra Harris
10, Sep, 2021 @6:30 AM
Gay, communist, female: why MI5 blacklisted the poet Valentine Ackland
A biography of the Dorset poet, who was a lover of the novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner, traces her struggle ‘to live as herself’
Vanessa Thorpe
04, Apr, 2021 @8:00 AM
Tackle that to-be-read pile: the books to try if you're self-isolating
From Nora Ephron to Thomas Mann, here are 12 books to entertain, challenge and inspire if you’re confined at home due to Covid-19
Alex Clark
18, Mar, 2020 @2:30 PM
Of Cats and Elfins by Sylvia Townsend Warner review – charming fantasies
Nymphs and phoenixes feature in a collection of remarkable short pieces by the author of Lolly Willowes
Emily Rhodes
16, Jan, 2020 @9:58 AM
Top 10 books about the River Thames
From bucolic source to marshy lower reaches, London’s mighty river has inspired great writing
Caroline Crampton
26, Jun, 2019 @12:40 PM
Country diary: literary tourists follow Sylvia Townsend Warner's path
East Chaldon, Dorset: Her diary records a happy morning when she and her lover, the poet Valentine Ackland, lay on top of a barrow listening to the wind
Vivien Cripps
19, Feb, 2018 @5:30 AM
Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes is 'a great shout of life'
Defying the genteel harness of Edwardian spinsterhood, this novel’s heroine instead becomes a witch and dallies with Satan himself
Justine Jordan
28, Dec, 2016 @10:00 AM
The 100 best novels written in English: the full list
Robert McCrum has reached a verdict on his selection of the 100 greatest novels written in English. Take a look at his list
17, Aug, 2015 @9:11 AM
Life on the wave: how fisherman turned artist John Craske was saved by the sea
Admired by the likes of John Betjeman and Peter Pears, John Craske spent a spell in an asylum before taking up painting and embroidery. Now, seven decades after his death, his dramatic seascapes are finally getting wider acclaim
Julia Blackburn
13, Mar, 2015 @11:00 AM
The 100 best novels: No 52 – Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1926)
A young woman escapes convention by becoming a witch in this original satire about England after the first world war, writes Robert McCrum
Robert McCrum
15, Sep, 2014 @4:45 AM
On the shelf: Bridget Jones and other literary singletons
Bridget Jones is back – as a widow. Why in fiction is it still a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman must be in want of a husband, asks Rachel Cooke
Rachel Cooke
11, Oct, 2013 @3:00 PM
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