Allingham and others (Journal)

Went the day well?

2012-01-27T16:18:19Z

I think it did, rather. The wonderful Eastern Angles are still interested in the possibility of a play about Margery and meanwhile I haven't missed the advertising deadline to grab a space for the Oaken Heart in their spring production Private Resistance by Ivan Cutting. The Eastern Angles spring tour runs from February to May and takes in so many of the village halls and other unpretentious venues where Margery herself would have loved to stage plays. An idea firmly suqashed by her father Herbert in the mid-1920s.

Joyce Allingham (in a dinghy)

2011-12-03T13:06:45Z

New Bottle Street Gazette out. Includes my little piece abut Joyce - cameo in the Salt-Stained Book (click here)

Catriona McPherson misses Margery Allingham

2011-10-25T07:37:19Z

Enjoyable article from Hollywood paper about Catriona McPherson. Says she started writing her own detective novels because MA & co were all dead. I was helping Francis plough through the CWA boxes and boxes of dagger submissions when her first novel came out. Both of us thought how deft and delightful it was - and quite rightly it won the Ellis Peters award that year.

Clearly Catriona's going from strength to strength and I'll be looking out for the next in her series.

Click here

belated notice

2011-08-29T21:59:52Z

Notice of The Oaken Heart in This England

The Oaken Heart & village cricket

2011-05-01T12:07:39Z

I think Margery Allingham would have liked this one -

MAIL ON SUNDAY (London)

May 1, 2011 Sunday

PAPERBACKS
BY SIMON SHAW

The Oaken Heart
by Margery Allingham
Golden Duck £13.99 % £11.99 inc p&p
Crime writer Margery Allingham, best known as the creator of Albert Campion, wrote this stirring tribute to the people of rural England in 1940, when the country lay under threat of German invasion.
It s a portrait of the Essex village in which she lived, disguised under the name of Auburn, and this splendid new edition also contains extracts from her diaries and letters. The Germans can bomb us all they like, she says, but nothing will get in the way of village cricket, which epitomises the very English secret of combining individualism with co-operative effort .

Oaken Heart as a 'retro read'

2011-04-15T22:16:46Z

Val Hennessy in the Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-1376465/RETRO-READS.html

The 'Friend' Book Club

2011-04-14T17:14:16Z

D.C. Thomson's People's Friend magazine has made The Oaken Heart their Book Club choice for April. When I think of the years that Margery's family - especially her father Herbert Allingham - laboured for 'the North' and never felt appreciated. Well, I wish Herbert was around to see this. Here's the ad.

Also I've got files of preremptory letters upstairs from dictatorial Dundee editors demanding that Herbert jump to their tune - yet the people I've been dealing with now couldn't have been more approachable and charming. Obviously we've all gone soft ...

The Oaken Heart of Village Life

2011-03-21T12:47:31Z

Neil D'Arcy Jones of the Essex County Standard said he wished he had a job like mine. He thoroughly enjoyed meeting Alan Smith (son of Albert Smith, the Tolleshunt D'Arcy handyman who was such a practical and reassuring presence in the village) and Nora Curtis who had been a young wife and mother during the WW2 years. Neil was right, of course, hearing the stories of people who experienced the events which are recorded in the new edition of The Oaken Heart has been a marvellous experience for which I am deeply grateful. But I wouldn't want him to undervalue his own expertise. From a morning's interviewing he produced a delightful article. Click here to read it.

How Essex Beat the Blitz

2011-03-12T21:22:09Z

Generous and perceptive appreciation by Simon Heffer - entirely gets the point of this village book. Read it!

Sarah Weinman in the Wall Street Journal

2011-01-31T08:51:27Z

The Wall Street Journal published a 'reputations' feature on Margery Allingham this weekend. Written by astute U.S. critic Sarah Weinman it probably didn't tell Allingham fans anything they didn't already know but it said it elegantly, authoritatively and in a good place.