Simon McCauley

Catalina is a timeless good read. Maugham's work, with its penetrating insight is much like the work of a surgeon; incisive, meticulous and impartial. Never judging but letting the facts speak for themselves. So it is in his romance of 16 th century s Spain. In this sympathetic satire he entertains the reader with church and court events woven into a fabric of political intrigue. One is left feeling that little has changed in human nature after 400 years. A great read!

Wells of the unfettered mind, refusing to eke out his life in social harness, lived to relate a narrative of his thoughts and experiences of his life and his reflections of life in all manner and form not only in his time but in prior times. Reading Kipps and Polly is akin to stepping through a trapdoor and being there ; much like the fly on the wall, licking up the atmosphere. Vicarious pleasure doesn't get much better than this. Bealby comes from the same stable; a thoroughbred claiming the prize for a work that now is a hundred years old. Not to be missed; a book for the everyman.

A brilliant survey of two persons enmeshed in a passionate affair that inevitably leads to their doom. Loosely based on the Crippen case, this story captures the vulnability of these two lovers with a sympathy combined with an atmosphere of fatality. "We The Accused" l feel ,is undeservedly forgotten and just like so many other neglected old masterpieces, deserve classic status and an ongoing reading public. Thank you for inviting me to comment. Simon.