Welcome to the lair of Ana the Imp!

I long to believe in immortality…If I am destined to be happy with you here-how short is the longest life. I wish to believe in immortality-I wish to live with you forever. John Keats to Fanny Brawne, July 1820


A thing of beauty is a joy forever. It is indeed, and Jane Campion’s new mo… Continue

I hate soppy pulp fiction, I always have, but I adore high romance; romance as the most sublime form of literature.

Knut Hamson's Victoria is one of the most beautiful love stories ever written. The ending came close to breaking my heart; I don't think I've ever cried so hard over a book. But the love story that captivates me more than any other is that of Cathy and Heathcliff in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

Alas, nobody-apart from me, that is!-seems to understand the elemen… Continue

When it comes to fiction there are two things I tend to avoid: historical novels and almost anything on the Man-Booker list.

I have read some good historical novels, and I'm thinking specifically of Robert Graves' Claudius books as well as his Belisarius, and Marguerite Yourcenar's Mémoires d… Continue

Will O' The Wisp is a strange, enigmatic novelette, the first I have ever read by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, a French writer and well-known adherent of the Fascist right in that country, who committed suicide in 1945. Indeed, I think it may very well be the only novel of his translated into English… Continue

Earlier this year I wrote a blog headed A Forgotten Serial Killer, a brief account of the career of Paul Ogorzow, executed for the murder of a number of women in wartime Berlin, a piece I introduced as follows:

There are certain periods of history, and certain societies, that… Continue