Home again...

...and lots to tell you including the low-down on this,

and how I came by a bottle of Laureate's Choice, Carol Ann Duffy's sherry butt stipend,and which is now gracing my Bookroom.

But it's all about books and I was very excited to find a pile waiting for me when I arrived home including this which I have been waiting for with much antsinthepantsation and will be making a start this very evening...

Magnificent Obsession by Helen Rappaport to be published next week. I'm going back to London for a whistle-stop and to hear Helen talking about this book at the V&A on November 15th...unmissable.

Charles Dickens A Life by Claire Tomalin. I saw Claire Tomalin interviewed a few weeks ago and she said quite clearly this will be her last biography, but both these books seem like perfect scene-setting for our forthcoming year of Middlemarch and George Eliot so I'm going to dive in.

Someone mentioned George Eliot's birth and death dates as November 22nd and December 22nd respectively... so shall we kick off on November 22nd as a start date for beginning the first instalment of our shared read of Middlemarch and we could aim to end the book on December 22nd 2012.