Just finished Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot. It won’t set the world on fire, but it’s a beautifully produced treasure trove of fascinating trivia about the North East of England.
I now have, thanks to the book, at least 25 different reasons to visit Sunderland and its environs.
And for one thing, I need to find out a lot more about the truth behind the Lewis Carroll/CL Dodgson myth. It turns out that the geeky mathmo with the penchant for little girls was an invention of his family, intending to divert the world from his much more scandalous activities with grown-up women. Thanks to an inversion of morals since Victorian times, his (innocent) interest in young girls is now regarded with paedo-frenzy. Or so, at least, says Talbot, and this book
Filed under: Book Review
