Thirteen of us had a very enjoyable lunch at The Red Lion in Barnes on Monday 17th. It was lovely to be able to actually see and be with each other – and to have a proper chat and catch up. We cannot sing the praises of The Red Lion enough! We were what we...
The English silk industry expanded rapidly at the end of the 17th century, stimulated by the number of skilled Protestant weavers fleeing from religious persecution in France, and it became centered within one square mile of Spitalfields Market in London. In the first...
We held our December meeting in early January to avoid the holiday season and discussed the Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin. On the eve of World War II, Grace arrives in London and obtains a job in a rundown, dusty old bookshop, which she brings to life and...
This month we read How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee. The novel is set in Singapore and is told from two different points of view. Firstly, an old lady, Wang Di, with flashbacks to her life as a comfort woman during the Japanese occupation and secondly, Kevin, a...
The gin and talk flowed when eight of us got together at Sue B’s to try out some gins – old and new. We covered from Japan to India (well, the branding was overseas, the distilleries more local), and even more local with Kew Gardens, Chiswick House and...
This month we discussed A Respectable Trade by Philippa Gregory. This differs from Gregory’s Tudor and earlier novels, as it is set in a booming Bristol of 1787 and describes the immense human suffering caused by the triangular slave trade and the greed of merchants....
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