GOOD morning, everybody!” Miss Parver beamed, scanning her class on the first day back at Uppington Grammar School after the autumn half term. “I hope you’re rested, because, with mock exams in Januar

Literary news andreviews with alocal flavour

WOULD you look at the man!” Maggie said. She wasn’t much to look at herself, being as black as sin from the coal dust. She’d just finished a shift at the colliery screens, picking lumps of coal out of

by Harriet Lane (£20, HB, Orion) What lies beneath the image we construct of ourselves? Ruth, newly divorced and drifting as her daughter leaves home, feels invisible – until Sookie, her dazzling form

The rise and fall of an undervalued institution

My only commandment is ‘Thou shalt not bore’