This is a wonderful post on many levels. Open Culture brings us a world of fine information across a huge range of topics, and this is a timely reminder for all of us who love and value free speech and the arts. This is Benedict Cumberbatch at the Hay Literary Festival reading a letter from … Continue reading
Filed under fiction …
A Murder Ballad
Old Oak has some great stories in it, and it is easy to imagine the appeal of ghost stories and murder ballads told round fires in mid winter: “Sir Walter Scott once declared that nothing was more dramatically effective than an old murder ballad. With anyone like all to recite it, I can well believe … Continue reading
Workers and Reading
Lady Bell devotes a whole chapter of her At the Works to the subject of literacy, suggesting that the spread of literacy does not necessarily lead to the enjoyment of literature. At the time of the French Revolution, there was a great fear in Britain of the poor learning to read, but especially to write, … Continue reading
Gollum and Turkish Law
This is from yesterday’s i newspaper, and would be funny if it wasn’t true: “He is shrivelled, slimy and will stop at nothing to lay his hands on a golden ring. But is Gollum a villain? The fate of a Turkish doctor hangs on the answer to that seemingly trivial question. Having shared a Facebook … Continue reading
An introduction to Thomas Ingoldsby and his gothic legends
An introduction to Thomas Ingoldsby and his gothic legends.
Living Muses of Great Britain
Women have on the whole had a tough time throughout history, but in England in the mid to late 18th century, as the period between the two world wars, the shortage of men allowed women with talent to emerge into the public spotlight, albeit in socially acceptable fields. This engraving by Richard Samuel published in … Continue reading
God Help the Girl
This is the directorial debut of indy band Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch. It starts with quirky but cool Eve escaping from a psychiatric hospital, to burst into song through the streets of Glasgow, where she meets several budding musicians, they form a band and though not a lot really happens, but it happens well. … Continue reading
A Village Without Time
This is from the introduction to Primo Levi’s ‘If Not Now, When?’ “In my village there weren’t many clocks. One on the church steeple, but it had stopped years and years ago, maybe during the revolution. I never saw it working, and my father said he hadn’t either. Not even the bell ringer had a … Continue reading
Germans and the War
Britain and the States have been making movies about the Second World War for decades; they were used for propaganda and morale boosting, and bookshops still have shelves groaning beneath the books still in print. The Germans themselves have been wary of this, but when they do it, they do it well. Heimat is a … Continue reading
Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
This is the book I chose to write about in my MA degree as the book that changed my life. At the time it felt like I just pulled it out of the air, but it is one of the few books that I keep returning to and seeing something more in it, more layers, … Continue reading
texthistory 