Skip to main content

Book review: A History of Bury St Edmunds by Frank Meeres

 


This is a book that I will be keeping, as I am sure that I have not absorbed all of the information in one reading! As this is my home town, I found that I often stopped reading to look on a map to find the places which the book was referring to.

I'm not sure that this book would be highly interesting to anyone with no connection to Bury; and I did notice that the author was amusingly defensive of the town (which was described as 'dull' in the nineteenth century) and also mildly disapproving of some modern development. The writing style was fairly engaging- although I might not be the best person to judge this, as my idea of 'readable' has probably been heavily skewed by some incredibly unreadable books during my history degree! One of my favourite books so far, as I will be able to wander around Bury feeling much more well informed about its history, and perhaps actually understand the origins of some of the place and road names.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2014 aims and review of 2013 aims

After all of the Christmas feasting (the fridge is still full of cheese, and sprouts that didn't get cooked), and despite the first cold of the winter, I am feeling the urge to get cracking with some projects, and finish up all of those little lingering jobs that I've been putting off. One of those is to work out what I am aiming to achieve this year...and this is what I have come up with: - complete first module of C&G knitting course and start second. Save enough money to pay the course fees for the whole course. - donate 2% (minimum) of earnings to charity. I am planning to donate at the end of each month, and to donate to a variety of causes, local, international, animals, people, conservation- hopefully a wide variety. - read down the house- I'd like to read 12 books this year, which would leave quite a few books unread. But it'd be nice to establish the habit of reading again. - reduce stash of knitting yarn from just under 40,000 metres to under 30,000 m...

A book at bedtime

I used to read a lot when I was a child/teenager. We'd go to the town library, I'd check out the full allowance of books (which I think was 8, but may have increased to 12 later on) and by the next time we went back to the library (probably the following week), I'd have read them all. Now that I have to do things like go to work, feed myself, wash clothes etc etc, I probably don't read that many books in a year. (Although I do read the newspaper on my Kindle most days).  This may also be influenced by the fact that if I really get in to a book I find it hard to tear myself away from it to do anything else, such as sleep, and end up knackered and living in a bit of a mess. (Moderation...what's that?! So rather than watching stuff on BBC iPlayer at bedtime, I am going to start reading, but limit myself to 10.30pm lights out to try and impose this 'moderation' thing on myself. (If I am really tired or it is a boring book, I may fall asleep with book on face, a...

Belated round-up

Having just re-read my 2014 aims post , and noticed that I intended to write a monthly round up of my progress, I thought it was about time for, err, a three-and-a-half monthly progress summary! - C&G knitting course- I have made slow progress on this- although slow is better than none! I have at least written out a giant list of what I need to do to finish the module so that I can have the satisfaction of ticking things off said list. I've knitted a few more samples and written up the notes on them. I think I need to focus more on this aim, if I am to actually finish the module this year. I seem to have a bit of mental block about it though, and I am not sure why. - donate 2% of earnings to charity. I have been doing this, although more by sponsoring people for the London Marathon and joining the National Trust than by picking a charity each month and donating to it, which is what I originally envisaged. I am wondering if donating less often, say every six months, would b...