Kirjahaku

It's the summer of 1952, and Lois is missing the love of her life. Her boyfriend, Bill, has gone to the Northern Ontario town of Kirkland Lake for work, leaving 17-year-old Lois, a Bell Telephone switchboard operator, back in Toronto where she pines for him daily. What else to do but write? From July to September of that year, and again briefly in 1953, Lois wrote Bill at least 37 letters, which were found by her daughters after her death in 2021. Bill, who had died the year before, had saved them all for 66 years, lovingly folded into their original envelopes, and carefully stashed at the back of a dresser drawer. Interspersed with the letters are explanations, reflections, photographs, and historical notes on a time period rapidly disappearing from living memory. Dear Bill offers a glimpse into the pop culture and lifestyle of early-fifties Toronto through the eyes of a heartsick teenage girl, as Lois professes her love with unabashed candour. In that post-war time period, some women, many of whom had joined the work force, were questioning the ritual of marriage and the role of wife. Not Lois. For her, it was simple, and she wasn't going to let up until she had that ring on her finger.

It's the summer of 1952, and Lois is missing the love of her life. Her boyfriend, Bill, has gone to the Northern Ontario town of Kirkland Lake for work, leaving 17-year-old Lois, a Bell Telephone switchboard operator, back in Toronto where she pines for him daily. What else to do but write? From July to September of that year, and again briefly in 1953, Lois wrote Bill at least 37 letters, which were found by her daughters after her death in 2021. Bill, who had died the year before, had saved them all for 66 years, lovingly folded into their original envelopes, and carefully stashed at the back of a dresser drawer. Interspersed with the letters are explanations, reflections, photographs, and historical notes on a time period rapidly disappearing from living memory. Dear Bill offers a glimpse into the pop culture and lifestyle of early-fifties Toronto through the eyes of a heartsick teenage girl, as Lois professes her love with unabashed candour. In that post-war time period, some women, many of whom had joined the work force, were questioning the ritual of marriage and the role of wife. Not Lois. For her, it was simple, and she wasn't going to let up until she had that ring on her finger.

William Deedes is a national institution. Over the course of a career spanning seventy years, 'dear Bill' has become one of the most respected and admired journalists of the last century. This is his story, told with his characteristic modesty, insight and wit.Cutting his teeth at the Morning Post, Bill Deedes was sent off to cover the Abyssinian war, thereby gaining him a reputation as a fearless war reporter and also inadvertently providing Evelyn Waugh with the inspiration for Scoop's hero, Henry Boot. Kept on after the Telegraph merger, Bill rose through the ranks until he was called into politics, taking his place as a member of Harold Macmillan's Cabinet. Soon however the Telegraph called again and made him editor - a position he held for several years. Today he continues to write for the Telegraph as well as work tirelessly for charity.Now updated and revised, including recent photographs, Dear Bill is an extraordinary memoir which provides a unique and idiosyncratic perspective on matters political and social, British and global, for the greater part of the twentieth century and beyond.

In the four decades between 1920 and 1960, William Deacon, Canada's first full-time literary journalist, devoted his career to the twin goals of fostering a Canadian readership for Canadian writers and creating a sense of community among those writers. His reviews in Saturday Night, The Mail and Empire, and Globe and Mail were the most widely read literary commentary of his day. His vast correspondence with a wide range of writers, politicians, historians, cultural nationalists and a select number of eccentrics created a forty-year dialogue in which is ideas about writing, publishing culture, and politics were shared, formulated, and debated with a formidable array of personal and literary friends, among them E.J. Pratt, Laura Goodman Salverson, Duncan Campbell Scott, A.R.M. Lower, J.S. Woodsworth, Thomas Raddall, Hugh MacLennan, and Mazo de la Roche. The exchanges trade the ebullient cultural nationalism of the 1920s and Deacon's enthusiastic immersion in that climate, the hardships and readjustments of the 1930s, the consolidation and new discoveries of the 1940s, and the rounding-off of his career in the 1950s. A few exchanges from the 1960s reveal his continuing interest in the issues of the day and his support of young writers. Whether he was corresponding with Emily Murphy or Peter Newman, with Grey Owl or Gabrielle Roy, his goal was the same -- to encourage, celebrate, and support the literary and culture vitality of Canada. His correspondents responded with intimacy, candour, and warmth, expressing their concerns and rejoicing in their successes. Their combined voices within the Deacon correspondence still create an immediate sense of the unfolding of Canadian cultural history across four important decades.

(From the Synopsis) The letters passing back and forth between thees two "Bills" trace their day-by-day wartime adventures (and occasional misadventures)

(From the Synopsis) The letters passing back and forth between thees two "Bills" trace their day-by-day wartime adventures (and occasional misadventures)

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE ACCLAIMED THE GRAN TOUR AND THE MARMALADE DIARIESAn irreverent homage to the '95 travel classic.'It would be wrong to view this book as just a highly accomplished homage to a personal hero. Aitken's politics, as much as his humour, are firmly in the spotlight, and Dear Bill Bryson achieves more than its title (possibly even its author) intended.' Manchester ReviewIn 2013, travel writer Ben Aitken decided to follow in the footsteps of his hero - literally - and started a journey around the UK, tracing the trip taken by Bill Bryson in his classic tribute to the British Isles, Notes from a Small Island.Staying at the same hotels, ordering the same food, and even spending the same amount of time in the bath, Aitken's homage - updated and with a new preface for 2022 - is filled with wit, insight and humour.