Good morning everyone,

I'm reading a great book right now, it's called Square Haunting and it's by Francesca Wade. As a project it's sort of like a very long Fem Fri, about five women between the wars and the connection is that they all lived in Mecklenburgh Square in Bloomsbury. It fills one with a very strong desire to live in Bloomsbury (even if the people there are having a miserable time of it) or at least to visit/look at Bloomsbury. If you live walking distance from Mecklenburgh Square, please feel free to take a photo of it and text me that photo. I'm also scratching this itch via estate agent listings but it's not the same.

Here's a review:

Francesca Wade has made a lofty, secluded square into a terrific subject for her first book. She wandered into Mecklenburgh Square, on the edge of Bloomsbury, by chance. She responded to it fervently, researched it vigorously – and identified it as a magnet for adventurous women. Her starting point is modest: she writes about the Mecklenburgh years of five 20th-century women, not all of them long-term residents. Her reach is wide: Imagist poetry, the rise of Russian studies, detective fiction, the League of Nations. Her aim is high: she argues that taken together these lives suggest a new way of looking at the mid-20th century.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n20/susannah-clapp/each-of-us-is-a-snowball

Anyway, the chapter I've just read is about H. D., imagiste and moderniste. She was friends (frenemies?) with D. H. Lawrence and, well:

H. D.! We all have these dreams! There's a really good reason why we don't write them down!

On the other hand:

Also, fiery golden dream D. H Lawrence was totally correct – H. D. is a stunning writer. Here's the first section of her amazing poem Eurydice, if you have time to spend with a poem today I strongly commend this one:

So you have swept me back,

and the past.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51869/eurydice-56d22fe6d049d

HAPPY THE WEEKEND. Have a lovely one, whichever Square you are haunting.

A xx.