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8 Werken 740 Leden 25 Besprekingen

Over de Auteur

Kate Colquhoun is the author of The Busiest Man in England, The Thrifty Cookbook, and Taste. As well as writing for several newspapers and magazines, she appears regularly on radio and television. She lives in London with her husband and two sons.

Bevat de naam: Kate Colquhoun

Fotografie: Author's twitter pic

Werken van Kate Colquhoun

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Algemene kennis

Geboortedatum
1964-11-12
Geslacht
female
Nationaliteit
UK
Woonplaatsen
London, England, UK
Agent
United Agents

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Besprekingen

Compared sometimes unfavourably with the Suspicions of Mr Wicher but this is a good book in its own right. Well researched and written.
 
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MerrylT | 11 andere besprekingen | May 18, 2023 |
I read the first the first few chapters, and than lost interest. I don't think it was bad writing or anything, just a bit bland. It may have become more interesting if I continued with it, but I have a pile of unread books, so I'm giving up.
 
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TheDivineOomba | 5 andere besprekingen | Feb 5, 2023 |
This book started out very interesting, but it got somewhat tiresome by the time I got to the end. It is the story of the first murder in a railway private car in England. The manhunt comes all the way to the United States during the Civil War. As another commenter I read pointed out, the book's author makes a better case than the British Crown representatives ever did with the man accused of the crime.

Readers who enjoy Victorian crime fiction may like this book. Readers of true crime books may like it as well. The book at moments reads like a crime fiction novel. It was also interesting because you get a lot of insights into Victorian society, especially the press of the time. I will say this: Nancy Grace and her ilk of vultures have nothing on Victorian newspapers. The press pretty much made it a sport to condemn the man, often with little evidence, in order to sell papers. As I said, the modern crime vultures on TV who try cases on the court of public opinion have nothing on those folks.

The reason I did not rate it higher is that the book does get a bit tiresome, especially during the trial stage. Some things do get a bit repetitive, and you find yourself skimming a bit, especially since you know how things will end. And in the end, you get a summary of how the case did help shape some laws later.

So, for me, it was an ok book. For others, it may be a good find.
… (meer)
 
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bloodravenlib | 11 andere besprekingen | Aug 17, 2020 |
This was a fascinating biography of Joseph Paxton, who began as a working-class gardener on a country estate and ended up designing the Crystal Palace for the 1851 Great Exhibition and serving as Member for Parliament. Kate Colquhoun has little to say about Joseph Paxton's origins, because the details are sketchy, but once he's older, he apprentices at the Horticultural Society, and then he is hired as head gardener by William Cavendish, Sixth Duke of Devonshire. Paxton was an intelligent, enthusiastic man whose enthusiasms fed into a positive feedback loop with the Duke. Basically, anything Paxton wanted to do with the estate, the Duke would pay for. They amassed a huge collection of orchids, racing others to cultivate and flower species new to England. Paxton got the first Victoria regia (a giant water lily several meters wide) to flower, and was also the first person to cultivate a banana in England. The bananas we eat today are the Cavendish bananas, named after Paxton's patron.

Paxton taught himself architecture to build new glasshouses for the Duke's collection, and he put in a proposal for the building to house the Great Exhibition. This thrust him into the national spotlight, and soon he was designing public parks, on the boards of railway corporations, standing for Parliament, creating a daily newspaper edited by Charles Dickens, and organizing relief efforts in the Crimea! Colquhoun's account of his rise is a fascinating look at a fascinating life, and she peppers the book with little human details ably, especially the stories of Paxton and the Duke's appreciation for each other and for plant life. Their enthusiasm for rare plants is infectious even through the printed page. I loved her accounts of Victoria's two visits to the Duke's estate, one as a young princess, one with Albert in tow. The Duke of Wellington thought Paxton's gardeners so well organized that he said Paxton would have made a good general!

Arguably, the Victorian period was the first time we really became conscious that we were moving into the future, and Paxton was one of the people trying to design that future. "The Busiest Man in England" is a great story in itself, and also filled with connections to other stories of the nineteenth century: I was pleased to see, for example, that Jane Loudon (author of The Mummy!: A Story of the Twenty-Second Century) got a couple mentions, and Paxton's life brought him into contact with Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Tenniel, and many other familiar names. A nice personal story from my favorite period of history.
… (meer)
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Stevil2001 | Oct 12, 2018 |

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Statistieken

Werken
8
Leden
740
Populariteit
#34,321
Waardering
½ 3.7
Besprekingen
25
ISBNs
40
Talen
4

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