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Poetry

In Our Time/Wilfred Owen

One of my favourite wireless programmes is In Our Time presented by Melvyn Bragg at 9-00 on Radio 4 every Thursday. The topic varies weekly and Bragg assembles a team of academics well-qualified to discuss it. Yesterday’s programme featured the World War poet Wilfred Owen. My connection with [...]

October 30, 2022 // 0 Comments

Some things keep changing – and some don’t

It is of these things that in the world of entertainment some of the standard rules of business apply and some don’t. In one sense it’s an obvious point to make – and no doubt most sectors (e.g. fishing, fashion, flying and … er porn) would probably claim similar – but few have been more [...]

March 8, 2020 // 0 Comments

Clive James RIP

Yesterday my brother gave me a lift from the south coast back to my home. On the way I commented that we should remember the date Wednesday 27th November 2019 because one day in some far off Pub Trivia Quiz it was possible that the question might come up as to which three culturally-significant [...]

November 28, 2019 // 0 Comments

Food for thought

Two aspects of modern life that reoccur in most people’s reflections upon modern life are: Firstly, the various ways we acquire knowledge, keep in touch with what is happening around us and across the world and choose to spend those proportions of our free leisure (or non-working) time that are [...]

August 26, 2018 // 0 Comments

A woman ahead of her time

Dorothy Parker – writer, critic, poet and celebrated wit – died fifty years ago this month. In the 20th Century decades when men were men and women supposedly knew their place, she was one of those females quite capable of holding her own against all-comers irrespective of any sexism or [...]

June 16, 2017 // 0 Comments

Some celebrations are always worth it

With the celebrations to mark the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare now flowering into their full majesty, I suspect there are millions of literary and theatrical philistines around the world like me who going to enjoy and benefit enormously from the surfeit of media articles, [...]

April 18, 2016 // 0 Comments

Because it’s there (not because it pays)

Sometimes, when you’re casting around for something to blog about, you can receive a helping hand from a traditional media outlet or vehicle. Today this happened for me when I came upon a blog by Ros Barber that appears today upon the website of The Guardian, giving her opinion on the experience [...]

March 22, 2016 // 0 Comments

There was a young man from Cambridge …

Whatever our background, interests, intelligence or sensibilities, we all love things that are clever, witty or bring a smile. Here’s a piece by Robert McCrum on librettist/playwright Ranjit Bolt, who has recently turned his hand to writing limericks, that appears today on the website of [...]

November 22, 2015 // 0 Comments

A blast from the past

These days it is often considered that the word ‘genius’ [broadly defined in most dictionaries as ‘an exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability … (or perhaps exceptional skill in a particular area of activity)’] is over-used. For example, and exaggerating to make [...]

August 25, 2015 // 0 Comments

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