Have made some good research progress on my book based on Puccini titled Verisimo! Some interesting letters have come to my attention that Puccini wrote in the last months of his life to a German soprano many years his junior. Elvira was as ever on high alert! Elvira is such a misunderstood woman and I have to say she had much to put up with being Puccini’s wife. Certainly not the demon that opera historians have painted her.  Still a long way to go, but I have completed the opening section and am very pleased thus far.

Aside from that I am also reading a biography on A.L. Rowse by Richard Ollard. Rowse, a Fellow at All Souls, Oxford, and Elizabethan Historian, was a friend of my fathers so I am fascinated to know more about his life. My sister remembers toasting crumpets on his coal fire in his sitting room at All Souls when she visited his with our father. What a lovely image. Also visiting his home in Cornwall for a family holiday.