Philip Spires commonplace book

I have kept a commonplace book for many years. It's a place where scraps of impressions are filed for future reflection. It's not a diary, it's just a mental scrapbook, concentrating on book reviews, concert reviews, visual arts and some occasional pieces on travel. It is also a place where I occasionally reflect on what I write. Details of my books can be found at http://www.philipspires.co.uk

Thursday, November 26, 2020

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

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There is perhaps no other tale in European culture that synthesises history, myth, literature and perhaps religion as famously and as freque...

Saturday, November 21, 2020

Sweet Caress by William Boyd

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Sweet Caress, the tile of William Boyd´s 2015 novel, refers to the gentle contact the individual makes with the very surface of existence, t...

Friday, November 20, 2020

The Leopard by Giovanni de Lampedusa

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We are in the mid-nineteenth century in what we now call southern Italy. But then it was specifically Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples under...

Sunday, November 15, 2020

The Innocent by Ian McEwan

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The Innocent by Ian McEwan is a spy novel. It's a love story. It's not a whodunnit, but it is a who did what. It's also a tour ...

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Love Is Blind by William Boyd

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Love Is Blind by William Boyd is a real page turner. But the reader’s interest is never generated by cheap melodrama concerning threatened ...

Monday, October 26, 2020

The Shores of the Adriatic – The Austrian Side – The Künstenland, Istria, and Dalmatia by F Hamilton Jackson 1908

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Interesting to read this account of a journey – not the author’s first to the area – while travelling through part of it. The writing make...

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Costa Blanca Arts Update - Claudi Arimany plays Mozart Flute Quartets and Marco Tezza plays Schubert, Janacek and Schumann

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Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the middle of October, and Alfas del Pi has three concerts in the renewed cycle of La Sociedad de Conciertos ...

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About Me

philipspires: I was born in Wakefield and was brought up in Sharslton, a mining Village. I went to London University and then became a maths teacher, working initially as a volunteer teacher in Kenya. I spent sixteen years in London, in Balham and Islington. In 1992, I left Britain for Brunei and then Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. I currently live in La Nucia, near Benidorm in Spain. I am interested in the relationship between nature and nurture, birthright and experience. Themes of culture and identity and their relation to economic and social roles underpin my writing. What we are born into relates to what we become, but we are rarely in control. What others do, our interests and intellects and the way we choose to earn a living, all of these shape us into what we become. It may be that culture is the sum of all assumptions that others make on our behalf, whereas identity represents our reactions to them. I did a PhD on the effects of education in economic development in the Philippines. I was President of Alfas del Pi Music Society for twelve years.

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