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Dr Rob Spence

Rob Spence

  • In this day and age

    I found this story astonishing. In the year of my birth,  about a mile from where I lived, a teenage girl was being sectioned under the mental health act for the crime of having a baby. That boy, a few months older than me, was adopted, and has never known his mother.  I thought this…

  • Chinese Whispers

    An interesting example of how stories are distorted in the telling, and how ‘news’ is created. Yesterday, at my place of work, there was a power cut. It happened around lunch time. I went out of my office to see if it was just my room, or more general. It was quickly apparent that the…

  • Nick and Nick

    To the IABF once more for the latest in their literary event series. The subject this week was Nicholas Royle, together with Nicholas Royle. Royle mark 1 is an academic, the co-author of the very successful undergraduate text An Introduction to Literature Criticism and Theory, and the sole author of The Uncanny. He is also,…

  • Bedlam sans Merci

    To the Dancehouse with Caroline for a celebratory gig with Louis Barabbas and the Bedlam Six.  The prolific Mr Barabbas has a new album out, but this gig was really a showcase for the band, and an opportunity to feature John Otway, self-styled “rock and roll’s greatest failure”, whose extraordinary career includes two hit singles…

  • Seeing Galileo

    Gylphi, run by my friend Anthony Levings, published this book last month, and it is a strange beast.  I have been trying to make my mind up about it, but trying to categorize it is difficult – it contains poems, essays, playlets, photos and meditations. It’s a collaborative effort, from Jason Lee – no, not…

  • Look Back at Angers

    To Angers, for the fourth international colloquium at the Anthony Burgess Centre, this time focusing on Burgess’s encounters with the Elizabethans. It was, as usual, a very enjoyable event, and it was great to meet up with old Burgessian pals, and to make some new ones. Angers is a very pleasant town, with a chateau,…

  • Bonfire of the Humanities

    It’s quite likely that I will be out of a job in eighteen months or so. The funding cuts announced by the government in the wake of the Browne review are particularly savage in the subject area where I work, and in the kind of institution where I work. The emphasis on the so-called STEM…

  • Sir John Summerscale

    It occurred to me to look at The Times obituaries for the elusive Sir John, editor of The Penguin Encyclopedia. And there he is. It’s a classic diplomat’s career, in countries that no longer exist. I am fascinated by these men of the late Empire. They were there as the world changed, and presided over…

  • Billy Collins

    Last night I had the good fortune to meet Billy Collins after he had performed at Edge Hill’s Poets Laureate event with Carol Ann Duffy.As my students know, American Literature is a bit of a blind spot with me, but I have been a fan of Collins since first hearing him read on Garrison Keillor’s…

  • Venice

    To Venice, with ‘er indoors. Both of us were experiencing The Serenissima for the first time. The new image at the top of the blog is a photograph taken from the Rialto bridge, and it, like so many other photos we took, is eerily reminiscent of a Canaletto painting. And that’s the thing with Venice…