Today I’m delighted to welcome historical novelist Rosemary J Kind. Her ‘Porridge & Cream’ read is Under Milk Wood  by Dylan Thomas.

“I was brought up on books. Both my mother and grandfather were great readers of literature and our house was full of books. I don’t know if I first fell in love with Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, reading it myself or on one of our family holidays, boating on the River Thames, when we’d all curl up in the evening and Mum would read to us all. Many of the passages we knew by heart and would quote them to each other, adding lines where the other finished. To this day my favourite scene is the one in Butcher Beynon’s kitchen. The humour is so dry and so cleverly done that it never fails to make me laugh.”

Rosemary with her copy of Under Milk Wood

“I must have read it for myself at about the age of ten, and when stuck at home a couple of years later with glandular fever, listened to the Richard Burton recording of the book over and over. It is a book in which poetry and prose intertwine like lovers. Where the musicality of the language coupled with the keen observations of humanity deliver humour, narrative and dialogue to the reader in a way that can always satisfy me. My mother’s copy was a beautiful hardback with a light blue dust jacket. Many many years later I was lucky enough to be given a present by my husband of my very own first edition of the book, signed by the author’s niece. It is one of my most treasured possessions.”
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Rosemary’s Bio
Rosemary J Kind writes because she has to. You could take almost anything away from her except her pen and paper. Failing to stop after the book that everyone has in them, she has gone on to publish books in both non-fiction and fiction, the latter including novels, humour, short stories and poetry. She also regularly produces magazine articles in a number of areas and writes regularly for the dog press.
As a child she was desolate when at the age of 10 her then teacher would not believe that her poem based on Stig of the Dump was her own work and she stopped writing poetry for several years as a result. She was persuaded to continue by the invitation to earn a little extra pocket money by ‘assisting’ others to produce the required poems for English homework!
Always one to spot an opportunity, she started school newspapers and went on to begin providing paid copy to her local newspaper at the age of sixteen. For twenty years she followed a traditional business career, before seeing the error of her ways and leaving it all behind to pursue her writing full-time.
She spends her life discussing her plots with the characters in her head and her faithful dogs, who always put the opposing arguments when there are choices to be made. Always willing to take on challenges that sensible people regard as impossible, she established and ran the short story download site Alfie Dog Fiction for six years building it to become one of the largest in the world, representing over 300 authors and carrying over 1600 short stories. She closed it in order to focus on her own writing.
Her hobby is developing the Entlebucher Mountain Dog in the UK and when she brought her beloved Alfie back from Belgium he was only the tenth in the country. She started writing ‘Alfie’s Diary’ as an Internet blog the day Alfie arrived to live with her, intending to continue for a year or two. Thirteen years later it goes from strength to strength and has been repeatedly named as one of the top ten pet blogs in the UK.

Rosemary’s links
Twitter
Facebook
Website 
Blog 

Rosemary’s latest book
1866. Daniel Flynn and Molly Reilly’s lives have been dogged by hardship since their orphan days on the streets of New York. Finally, the future is looking bright and Indiana is the place they call home. Now they can focus on making Cochrane’s Farm a success.
The Civil War might have ended but the battle for Cochrane’s Farm has only just begun. The Reese brothers are incensed that land, once part of their family farm, has been transferred to the ownership of young Molly. No matter that their Daddy had sold it years previously, jealousy and revenge have no regard for right. Women should know their place and this one clearly doesn’t.
Times are changing and a woman’s place is changing with it. How far will Daniel and Molly go to fight injustice and is it a price worth paying?
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What is a ‘Porridge & Cream’ book? It’s the book you turn to when you need a familiar read, when you are tired, ill, or out-of-sorts, where you know the story and love it. Where reading it is like slipping on your oldest, scruffiest slippers after walking for miles. Where does the name ‘Porridge & Cream’ come from? Cat Deerborn is a character in Susan Hill’s ‘Simon Serrailler’ detective series. Cat is a hard-worked GP, a widow with two children and she struggles from day-to-day. One night, after a particularly difficult day, she needs something familiar to read. From her bookshelf she selects ‘Love in A Cold Climate’ by Nancy Mitford. Do you have a favourite read which you return to again and again? If so, please send me a message.

Discover the ‘Porridge & Cream’ books of these authors:-
Julia Thum’s choice is ‘The Little White Horse’ by Elizabeth Goudge
Ivy Logan chooses ‘Reckless’ by Cornelia Funke
‘It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet’ by James Herriot is chosen by Mary Grand

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
Why does Rosemary J Kind @therealalfiedog re-read UNDER MILK WOOD  by Dylan Thomas? #books https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4a3 via @SandraDanby