The Quickening Maze

Creativity and madness are close and they may flow one into the other but at times, they may be quite ruinous. The Quickening Maze is a brilliant analysis of human creative consciousness. ‘May I ask you, what is your opinion of Lord Byron’s poetry?’ He did indeed raise both eyebrows at that, blowing l......more

The Quickening Maze promised to be such a good read, tailor-made for me. An award-winning novel about the poets, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and John Clare, set in Epping Forest, among the trees which I love. Epping Forest is an ancient woodland which straddles the border between Greater London and Essex.......more

Most of this novel worked very well for me. It's set in an asylum in Epping Forest in 1840. The ambitious doctor always flirting with bankruptcy is a great character as is his daughter who is urgently seeking love, as an escape from living in the vicinity of the insane. When Alfred Tennyson arrives,......more

The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet… ". . . are of imagination all compact," continues Shakespeare, and Adam Foulds might well have taken this for the motto of this novel. The setting is High Beach, a mental asylum run by Dr. Matthew Allen, on the fringes of Epping Forest, East of London. The time i......more

This very interesting novel covers several years in the lives of the owners and inmates of an asylum for the insane in England in the 1840s. It is the story of the nature poet John Clare who is slowly going mad, Dr Matthew Allen, the doctor charged with his care as well as the care of many other inma......more