Böcker av Lucy Beckett

Clare Wilson, long widowed, nearly eighty, and mostly alone in the Kensington flat where she has lived for decades, is used to the losses of old age. Her oldest friend has died; after years the pain of losing a child has not faded; and the young have lives of their own to live. While she struggles to sustain her faith in God and her hope for an England which makes her increasingly unhappy and increasingly ashamed, she is astonished and sustained by the gift of a new friendship. This, appearing so late in her life, is something she could not have imagined. It brings her not only someone to talk to during the peculiar months of Covid restrictions and distancing, but understanding of a country and a tragic history of which she knew nothing. Two old people in London, keeping each other company, should surely be safe from the horrors of the outside world.

The Year of Thamar's Book is set in the months from the spring of 2015 to thesummer of 2016. An elderly recluse living in a quiet village in Burgundydiscovers he is not as alone in the world as he has for many years assumed.His grandson, well-educated but ignorant, comes to the village to help the old manmake a book of the pile of chaotic manuscript that tells the story of a difficult,painful yet luminous life. As he writes, and listens, the young man learns a gooddeal, and begins to comprehend not only how French colonial history and thehorrors of war in Algeria formed and hurt his grandfather, but also how their lastingconsequences are still damaging his country and his own family. At the same timehe begins to understand his grandfather's faith.

A comprehensive account of Wagner's last, and strangest opera.

This detailed critical study of Wallace Stevens identifies the major concerns of his poetry. Lucy Beckett presents Stevens as a contemplative poet, engaged on a long enquiry into the nature of the relationship between the creative imagination and the world it illuminates and recreates.