Jeremy Duns

who is British born, but currently lives and works in Stockholm, is here on

Wednesday 28th July between 1and 2 pm to launch his new book

‘FREE COUNTRY’

It is May 1969, and MI6 double agent Paul Dark stands alongside mourners at the funeral of Sir Colin Templeton; the former head of the organisation, the man he knew simply as ‘Chief’ — and the man he killed in cold blood. Dark has got away with it, evading the attentions of both his fellow British spies and the KGB operatives to whom he long ago pledged loyalty. But that precarious security is about to be shattered, launching Dark back into the heart of an international conspiracy and making him a target for both exposure and assassination. Desperate to escape his predicament, Dark gambles everything on one last throw of the dice, exposing his Soviet handler to the British. But before long, he finds he has no choice but to go on the run again, taking him to the labyrinthine backstreets of Rome. The race is on to stop a deadly plot that dates back to the early years of the Cold War. The second part of the Paul Dark trilogy, and sequel to the critically acclaimed Free Agent, Free Country is another sweat-soaked Sixties-set spy thriller in the tradition of Len Deighton and Frederick Forsyth.

Come to have a chat with Jeremy, and get him to sign a copy of the book which will be available at a discounted price on the day.

Girl’s Night In on 15^th June 2010

My ladies group and I had a girl’s night in recently. It coincided with our book group meeting.  When the ladies found out I would be bringing Galaxy dark chocolate as part of the treats for Independent Book Week they couldn’t  believe it! They had never heard of Galaxy dark chocolate. Funnily enough we nearly had a full complement and a new member (Dee whom I had met recently down at the allotment).   As a book group we had really enjoyed reading ‘Chocolat’ by Joanne Harris: as women we really enjoyed chocolate.

Alison Richards who was hosting the event had kindly set aside a table so I could put out my wares, free chocolate, books on chocolates, copies of Book Time, various book marks and a bargain book ‘The Messenger of Athens’ by Anne Zouroudi.  The latter being at an unbeatable price of 99 pence they all went away with one in their bag of goodies.

I told them about my own holiday recently in Turkey which involved a very large black scorpion popping onto our terrace for breakfast. My 11 year-old son spent the rest of his holiday eating inside.  He finally came out late evening when we persuaded him scorpions and hornets don’t come out at night.  The last time we had been on holiday in Gocek (a beautiful marina in Turkey) a large hornet had flown in through the taxi window and been buzzing round my sons head.  This led us into discussing ‘The Tent, The Bucket and Me’ by Emma Kennedy.  Funnily enough it was all about her holiday experiences of camping in Britain and abroad in the Seventies.

The Tent, The Bucket and Me – Emma Kennedy rrp £7.99

The cover of ‘The Tent, The Bucket and Me’ caught my eye straight away, from the little girl’s haircut to her grin. It shouted out, ‘me, in the seventies on holiday!’  My book group ladies all agreed that it brought back memories of various camping trips they had taken in the seventies too.  The majority of us found it hilarious.  My poor husband (who is a baker and has to get up at 4 in the morning) was kept awake at night with me laughing out loud. 

The book follows Emma from being three years old on her various holidays with her parents Tony and Brenda.  They have one disastrous holiday after another in Britain and abroad.  The family have an encounter with a force 10 gale in Wales,  brave the squat toilets in France and have an interesting time in the Isle of Wight.

Dawn French is quoted on the front cover of ‘The Tent, The Bucket and Me’ as saying she thought it ‘frighteningly hilarious’.  Like her I thoroughly enjoyed this book and think it is well worth reading.

Our book group’s other book for discussion was:-

Dear Fatty – Dawn French rrp £7.99

 We are absolutely delighted that historian Helen Castor has agreed to take part in our ‘Meet The Author’ series of events at Warwick Words. Helen is no stranger to Warwick, having been schooled here and also coming here a few years ago  to talk about her previous fascinating book on the Paston Letters which received terrific reviews, was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2005 and won the English Association’s Beatrice White Prize in 2006. Helen is a historian of medieval England, and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.  She lives in London with her husband and son.

This time Helen will be  talking about ‘She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth’ which will be published to coincide with the Festival. This is the fascinating story of how royal power came to lie in female hands for the first time under the Tudor queens – and of the four women who came before them and who, whilst never reigning monarchs, held great power.

Four hundred years before Edward’s death, Matilda, daughter of Henry I and granddaughter of William the Conqueror, came tantalisingly close to securing her hold on the power of the crown. And between the 12th and the 15th centuries three more exceptional women – Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, and Margaret of Anjou – discovered, as queens consort and dowager, how much was possible if the presumptions of male rule were not confronted so explicitly.

The stories of these women – told here in all their vivid humanity – illustrate the paradox which the female heirs to the Tudor throne had no choice but to negotiate. Man was the head of woman; and the king was the head of all. How, then, could a woman be king, how could royal power lie in female hands?

An event to look forward to which will be full of interest from one of our top historians, and a local girl made good to boot!

We met at the Punchbowl in Warwick on Wednesday evening 23^rd June.  The book we had been reading was “The Glass Room” by Simon Mawer.  Without exception everyone had read the whole book and liked it – a very rare occurrence with this group!  The only possible weakness was the ending.  Some people felt that by tying up all the ends so neatly, Mawer had weakened the structure of the story.  Others found his way of drawing in the threads to bring the story full circle was clever and made the book more satisfying. In this fiction, the wealthy couple who build the fantastic modernist house in Czechoslovakia are a mixed couple – Victor is Jewish and his wife Leisl is not.  The real couple who built the house were both Jewish and never returned to it. We would all recommend the book to a friend, learned a lot about the particular period in history and enjoyed the characters, finding them all rounded and completely believable.

Our next meeting will be on 28th July.  We have chosen “The Elegance of th Hedgehog” by Muriel Barbier.  This was a word of mouth success in France in 2006 & was translated into English to great acclaim.  It is only recently available in paperback, it tells the story of Renee, the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building who leads a double life.  To all appearances, she is the epitome of the rather dowdy person her tenants expect to see, reading a cheap newspaper & waching TV all day long.  In fact she is a sharply intelligent, cultured and artisitc woman of great depth, knowledgeable and insightful.  A second character in the  book is Paloma Josse, twelve years old, also very intelligent and articulate & pretending not to be.  Paloma intends committing suicide on her thirteenth birthday as she cannot see the point of becoming an adult.  The death of one of their privileged neighbours brings dramatic changes to the lives of both these characters………

 We will meet to discuss the book at about 6.00pm in the Old Punchbowl.  We also made a list of other books we would like to read – ‘The Lacuna’ by Barbara Kingsolver (we all enjoyed the Poisonwood Bible)  ‘Nine Lives’, by William Dalrymple,  ‘Eleven Minutes Late’ by Matthew Engel (which is raising money for teenage cancer sufferers in Birmingham),  ‘Around Ireland with a Fridge’ by Tony Hawkes, and Bill Bryson’s ‘Notes From a Small Island’.  Inge, one of the members enjoyed our last book, “The Glass Room” so much that she would like to read another of Simon Mawer’s books, perhaps “The Fall”.

If you would like to join the group at our next meeting, please contact Frances at Kenilworth.  We have recently welcomed two new members and we can probably squeeze in just a couple more.

Reviewed by me in hardback and highly recommended, this is now published in paperback for the first time…………I strongly urge you to read the series which started with ‘Imperium’, with ‘Lustrum’ being the second, and more to come. It is fantastic writing, so well-researched and completely believable. Not normally a fan of historical fiction, this gripped me.

Rome, 63 BC. In a city on the brink of acquiring a vast empire, seven men are struggling for power. Cicero is consul, Caesar his ruthless young rival, Pompey the republic’s greatest general, Crassus its richest man, Cato a political fanatic, Catilina a psychopath, Clodius an ambitious playboy.

The stories of these real historical figures – their alliances and betrayals, their cruelties and seductions, their brilliance and their crimes – are all interleaved to form this epic novel. Its narrator is Tiro, a slave who serves as confidential secretary to the wily, humane, complex Cicero. He knows all his master’s secrets – a dangerous position to be in.

From the discovery of a child’s mutilated body, through judicial execution and a scandalous trial, to the brutal unleashing of the Roman mob, Lustrum is a study in the timeless enticements and horrors of power.