One of the perks of my job is travel. And since most of my work trips require an overnight stay, I’ve become increasingly familiar with hotel rooms in the last couple of years. I still feel a flutter of excitement when I open the door of a hotel room to see it for the first time – and thankfully the flutter only occasionally turns to disappointment. And the delight of the bedroom is often matched – or surpassed – by the breakfast choices on offer in the hotel restaurant the next morning. Continue reading “Hotel Life”
Author: rebecca.selman@btinternet.com
Literature and home
I love reading a book set in the place in which I live. Coming across familiar buildings, landmarks and street names as I turn the pages of a novel arouses a pride in me that where I live is worthy of literary treatment. The delight is increased when the geographical references are unexpected. Discovering a passage in Maggie O’Farrell’s The hand that first held mine (2010), in which the couple at the centre of the present-day narrative take their newborn baby to see a doctor in Dartmouth Park, the area of North London in which I was then living, made me enjoy the book even more. Continue reading “Literature and home”
Christmas Dinner
At this time of year I always write a festive-themed post for my blog. I’ve covered mince pies in Pride and Prejudice , Christmas cake in Jane Eyre, fudge in Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales and rice cake from D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers. Last year I broke away from the Western Christian tradition and opted for Hannukah doughnuts from Francesca Segal’s The Innocents.
But I have never written about Christmas dinner itself. So it’s time to remedy that. Continue reading “Christmas Dinner”
Food and feminism
Not surprisingly as the literature I’ve written about has moved into the domestic sphere (early 19th century onwards), so the food described has tended to be prepared by women. Whether it be Charlotte Lucas’s mince pies in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the dinner party prepared in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway or the welsh cakes made by Evans the Death’s mother in Under Milk Wood, it is largely women who are responsible for the food preparation. Continue reading “Food and feminism”