Susan Hill

The online museums you’ll never want to leave

11 April 2020 9:00 am

‘We don’t talk about the war.’ Yet those of my generation and older reference it daily. The coronavirus is an…

My isolation reading list

4 April 2020 9:00 am

A psychiatrist once told me that it takes one’s subconscious about three weeks to catch up with a significant life…

Shakespeare knew a thing or two about self-isolation

28 March 2020 9:00 am

‘Now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in To saucy doubts and fears.’ Shakespeare got there first, as ever, and…

Susan Hill: The brilliance of the NHS cancer service

15 February 2020 9:00 am

Exactly 50 years ago I drove, for the first visit of many, across country to Aldeburgh in Suffolk, following the…

A Halloween short story: by The Woman in Black’s Susan Hill

26 October 2019 9:00 am

‘This is a true story…’ Right. Only this time, it really is. There are no wails, whistling winds or taps…

Everything under the sun: The glory of garden centres

8 June 2019 9:00 am

Don’t you just love garden centres? You have to be mad to go on a sunny Sunday morning in the…

Everyone hates Maggi Hambling’s ‘Scallop’ – but I love it

23 February 2019 9:00 am

Benjamin Britten was adamant that he did not want any memorial sculpture of himself in Aldeburgh, the Suffolk coastal town…

Illustrated by Carolyn Gowdy

The boy who dreams: A Christmas short story by Susan Hill

15 December 2018 9:00 am

‘Wake up, boy! Wake up…’ My father was shaking me and I was confused because it seemed that I had…

Sarah Perry’s Melmoth is a great read, but not a great novel

29 September 2018 9:00 am

‘What might commend so drab a creature to your sight, when overhead the low clouds split and the upturned bowl…

Susan Hill’s diary: The return of the eels

4 August 2018 9:00 am

The swifts had not arrived by June, nary a one, though a Yorkshire Dales friend reported their return, and there…

Diary

30 September 2017 9:00 am

I don’t know why party conferences no longer take place in Scarborough. As a child, I saw many an important…

Why I will never read Jane Eyre

12 March 2016 9:00 am

Have you ever set your face against a book? This year sees Charlotte Brontë’s bicentenary and the novelist Tracy Chevalier…

A Gothic horror story of quicksands, riptides and rituals

29 August 2015 9:00 am

This is a muddle of novel (originally published last year by Tartarus Press in a limited edition), though there are…

Susan Hill’s French notebook: My struggle to avoid local cuisine

11 July 2015 9:00 am

An overnight stop on the Ile de Ré taken between the St Malo ferry and the Quercy, where we always…

Anne Tyler’s everyday passions

14 February 2015 9:00 am

There was nothing remarkable about the Whitshanks. None of them was famous. None of them could claim exceptional intelligence, and…

The wonderful and unpredictable Candida Lycett Green

30 August 2014 9:00 am

Remembering Candida Lycett Green

How the NHS fails new mothers on breast-feeding

14 June 2014 8:00 am

Why isn’t there a proper service to show new nursing mothers how to feed their babies?

Don't let creative writing students read this book

12 April 2014 9:00 am

One of these is by Lydia Davis, acclaimed American writer. One is not. They are whole pieces, by the way,…

Susan Hill short story: The Boy on the Hillside

14 December 2013 9:00 am

Listen to Susan Hill read The Boy on the Hillside: [audioboo url=”https://audioboo.fm/boos/1816403-susan-hill-reads-the-boy-on-the-hillside”][/audioboo] The boy, Seth, stirred in his sleep. ‘Cold…’…

The Good Nurse, by Charles Graeber - review

24 August 2013 9:00 am

Charles Cullen, an American nurse, murdered several hundred patients by the administration in overdose of restricted drugs. Hospitals should be…

The Breath of Night, by Michael Arditti

27 July 2013 9:00 am

There is always meat in Michael Arditti’s novels. He is a writer who presents moral problems via fiction but is…