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Dr Rob Spence

Rob Spence

  • 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…

  • The Finkler Question

    To the new headquarters of the IABF for the first in its series of events with contemporary writers. Mancunian Howard Jacobson was presenting his latest novel, The Finkler Question . What an excellent speaker and reader he is! Too often, writers are not actually terribly good at reading their own stuff, as students in my…

  • Encyclopedia Spheniscida

    In 1966, Manchester Education Committee decided that the city was to abolish grammar schools, and go comprehensive. So that was the last year of the 11-plus examination. I was 11 at the time, and sometime in March of that year – I think – my class at Alfred Street sat the final Manchester exam, the…

  • Blog Award

    My friend Harriet Devine is once again up in the stratosphere of literary bloggers with her latest placing in the Wikio listing where I come a distant 2000 places behind, but I was pleased to be notified that someone must have liked me, because Topsyturvydom has received an award as one of the 2010 Top…

  • Italy in Notting Hill

    Simon Barraclough To the Travel Bookshop in Notting Hill for the launch of Any Human Face. Hugh Grant seems to have ceased employment there, so the paparazzi were not in evidence as I  mingled before the event, trying – and failing –  to look elegant on a sweltering evening. The very quaffable Italian wine, provided…

  • Any Human Face

    After enjoying Charles Lambert’s Little Monsters so much, I was looking forward to his latest novel, Any Human Face, and I was not disappointed. Set in Rome, this novel is a fast-paced and dark tale of murky deeds in high and low places, recounted from multiple perspectives over a span of nearly three decades. What…

  • Going Live…

    Chez Topsyturvydom, our Sunday morning news source tends to be Radio 5 Live, on the basis that Radio 4 is god-bothering until 9.00 a.m. Today’s top story was about the discovery of a car-bomb in Times Square, New York. Part of the report featured an admirably factual and concise statement from the NYPD police chief,…