Just finished Simon Winchester’s The Man Who Loved China for which I rummaged through the nearby Salvation Army bookstore for three years and turned out to be well worth the wait. With it I also picked up one of my fave writers, William Boyd’s Sweet Caress both of which feature protagonists who chain smoked and still managed to live to ripe old age. I first came across William Boyd through his novel Blue Afternoon, about riveting invented and historical events that happened towards the end of American military occupation of Manila in the 1900s. He also wrote a James Bond novel commissioned by the 007 franchise.
Am now in the middle of Peter Ackroyd’s Shakespeare. Beautiful writing, wisely argued conjectures, features Shakespeare under a loving and sympathetic light, resists being put down once started. His history of London is next in line.