JacquiWine

A Private View by Anita Brookner I’ve been making my way through Anita Brookner’s exquisitely written novels slowly but steadily over the past eight years. As a long-term reading project, I’m finding it fascinating to see how Broo…

New on the blog today, I've written about A PRIVATE VIEW by Anita Brookner.

A superb novel in which a dull, respectable middle-aged man is tempted to jettison his highly ordered life for a volatile, vampish young woman. I loved it! #BookSky 💙📚

jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/10/07/a...

Stanley Spencer painted a number of landscapes in and around Maidenhead in Berkshire, of which this work from 1939 is a notable example. It was a rural area of rolling countryside not far from his home in Cookham and where he first went to art college before going to the Slade.

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❤️

A hardback edition of Edith Wharton’s Ghost Stories.

And we also now have this lovely British Library edition of Edith Wharton’s ghost stories… #BookSky💙📚

Oh, that’s a beautiful edition! Fingers crossed you’ll enjoy them. 🤞

First time on the big screen. ❤️

Oh, definitely! They hosted an International Noir season a few months ago, and the whole programme looked top notch. I managed to to catch Pale Flower and Branded to Kill, both first-time watches for me.

It was wonderful, I must admit! A friend chose the novel for our book group 5 or 6 years ago, and it’s become one of my favourite reads.

It was such a treat to rewatch it on the big screen, especially the sweeping glamour of the ball!

The Garden is a great little cinema in Holborn - they always seem to have something interesting / off-the-beaten-track in their programme.

A still from the film showing Claudia Cardinale sitting next to Alan Delon. They are dressed glamorously for the ball - she is smiling and resting her chin on one hand.

Film poster for Il Gattopardo / The Leopard showing illustrations of the three main stars, Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale.

Lovely to see Visconti’s THE LEOPARD at The Garden Cinema this afternoon - a tribute screening for Claudia Cardinale. ❤️ #FilmSky

How timely! Yes, wait until you’ve read them. Katy, from A PRIVATE VIEW, is one hell of a character!

A Private View by Anita Brookner I’ve been making my way through Anita Brookner’s exquisitely written novels slowly but steadily over the past eight years. As a long-term reading project, I’m finding it fascinating to see how Broo…

“He had no doubt that she had earmarked him for future use, in which case she had made a grave mistake. He was not so stupid as to take her on trust or to tolerate any demands she might make of him. No doubt she thought to seduce him into this.” #BookSky 💙📚

jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/10/07/a...

100%! Watching THE CRANES ARE FLYING felt akin to some kind of religious experience for me. A breathtaking film, from the performances and emotional heft to the camera movements and editing.

Your first Kalatozov/Urusevsky film, whether it’s this, The Cranes Are Flying or Soy Cuba!, is always a miraculous experience. This was mine. Like finding out God was a cinematographer.

The Pushkin job: unmasking the thieves behind an international rare books heist The long read: Between 2022 and 2023, as many as 170 rare and valuable editions of Russian classics were stolen from libraries across Europe. Were the thieves merely low-level opportunists, or were bi...

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...

A long read

They definitely have that vibe!

I knew there must be a technical term for that kind of camera angle. Thank you for this!

The original Russian poster for Mikhail Kalatozov's Letter Never Sent (1960)

First watch: Letter Never Sent (1960). Mikhail Kalatozov's follow-up to The Cranes are Flying and a survival movie set in Siberia, also starring Tatiana Samoilova. Once again, it is filled with shots and scenes that defy logic, like having the characters walk through a burning forest. 1/3

This is one of my favourite paintings by Elwin Hawthorne: "Wick Lane" from 1930. It was once owned by Sir David Scott & it was sold @Sothebys in November 2008. I have included Elwin's painting notes for interest. #ElwinHawthorne #EastLondonGroup

A Private View by Anita Brookner I’ve been making my way through Anita Brookner’s exquisitely written novels slowly but steadily over the past eight years. As a long-term reading project, I’m finding it fascinating to see how Broo…

“He had no doubt that she had earmarked him for future use, in which case she had made a grave mistake. He was not so stupid as to take her on trust or to tolerate any demands she might make of him. No doubt she thought to seduce him into this.” #BookSky 💙📚

jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/10/07/a...

A Private View by Anita Brookner I’ve been making my way through Anita Brookner’s exquisitely written novels slowly but steadily over the past eight years. As a long-term reading project, I’m finding it fascinating to see how Broo…

New on the blog today, I've written about A PRIVATE VIEW by Anita Brookner.

A superb novel in which a dull, respectable middle-aged man is tempted to jettison his highly ordered life for a volatile, vampish young woman. I loved it! #BookSky 💙📚

jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/10/07/a...

A ★★★★ review of La Dolce Vita (1960) La Dolce Vita belongs to that large category of films that I aspired to like when I was a wannabe film buff teen. On the back of an Empire review, I purchased a widescreen VHS edition put out by Elect...

While dinner is in the oven, a few personal reflections about re-watching La Dolce Vita for the first time in 30 years or so
letterboxd.com/jamesewand/f...

Robert Stack as Lieutenant Stanislav Sobinski and Carole Lombard as Maria Tura in Ernst Lubitsch's TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1942)

—Lieutenant, this is the first time I've ever met a man who could drop three tons of dynamite in two minutes.

Happy birthday to Carole Lombard, whose magnificent swan song TO BE OR NOT TO BE (Lubitsch, 1942) is now playing on the Criterion Channel.

Once, when I was editing the FT polo supplement, I emailed her to ask if she'd write a jokey column about the new season. I was junior and knew nothing about polo so took a scattergun, slightly panicky approach to commissioning. Seconds after I hit send, the phone rang. 1/2

Meijer de Haan arrived in Pont-Aven around 1889 to take painting lessons from Paul Gauguin, in exchange for acting as his secretary and general factotum, a time he came into his own as a painter and developed his personal style. This work dates from 1890.

A pleasure. :)

And here is that episode, on Imogen by Jilly Cooper, with guests Daisy Buchanan and Ian Patterson. In Jilly’s own words, “it was all such terrific fun”. RIP. www.backlisted.fm/episodes/84-...

Another of the reasons I loved Barbara Pym's books when I was single was because she seemed to understand the utter desolation of losing a man, or not having one to love. Barbara had, in fact, bitter experience herself and was so heartbroken by one love affaire in 1943 that she burnt all the diaries covering it. The bleakness of its aftermath, described in her autobiography A Very Private Eye, makes unbearable reading. But from the ashes, nine years later in Jane and Prudence, rose Fabian Driver, who was based on the ex-lover and who in self-obsession and vanity, (Ego and Narcissus), ranks alongside Mr Collins, Kenneth Widmerpool and Malvolio as one of literature's great comic creations.

Virago edition of Barbara Pym’s Jane and Prudence, showing a colourful illustration of two women possibly sharing a secret.

#RIP Jilly Cooper.

Here she is on Barbara Pym, from the introduction to the current Virago edition of JANE AND PRUDENCE. #BookSky #JillyCooper 💙📚

With Autumn now seemingly upon us, I thought that this one of "Essex Landscape, Early Morning" by Walter Steggles from 1938 might be appropriate. The rising mist is just the sort of thing that one might see at this time of year. In the background one can see the Chappel Viaduct. #WalterSteggles