Buddha Da – Anne Donovan

 

This is the story of Anne Marie’s Da, the painter Jimmy, and his involvement with Buddhism. The story is told in the voices of Anne Marie, almost twelve years old, Liz her mother and Jimmy’s wife, and Jimmy, the Glaswegian painter, ‘ma Da,’ who becomes more and more drawn to the practice of meditation. This obviously throws up conflicts within the family and among Jimmy’s friends and colleagues. A good idea to examine the practice of Buddhism through the eyes of a fairly uneducated working class man? Well, yes, but there is just one snag.

The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley by Diana Petre

Roger Ackerley died in 1929. At his funeral, the obituary in The Times states, ‘Nearly a thousand business men from all over the British Isles as well as from the Continent attended the funeral at Richmond Cemetery yesterday, and the wreaths were so numerous that four men were especially engaged to load and unload them.’