The Guardian has a feature where readers say how wonderful the paper is. It’s usually either someone who has read the paper man and boy for fifty years, or some youngster who says how he picked up a copy in an idle moment, and abandoned the Daily Telegraph, or the Neasden Gazette, or whatever, on… Continue reading Gruaniad in shock horror
To Aarhus for the 9th international ESSE conference.’Er indoors accompanied me to this lovely city in Denmark, and we had a great time, both academically and socially. Aarhus has a very pleasant feel to it, and we certainly intend to be back in the future. You can get a flavour of what we saw from… Continue reading Bog people, Rosencrantz and a fake grave
Good news that Penelope Fitzgerald now has a permanent space on the web, and a little shameful that the originators are American- why couldn’t we manage it in Britain? Well, I suppose the web knows no boundaries, and it is an excellent site- congratulations to those who put it together. It’s curious, as Dovegreyreader says,… Continue reading Penelope Fitzgerald
This film was made by the Eameses thirty-one years ago. I thought they made chairs… Fascinating, and remarkable to think that it’s three decades since it was made. Not sure about the cheesy organ though, even if it is by Elmer Bernstein.
I suppose the way I encountered Charles Lambert’s excellent debut novel Little Monsters is emblematic of how the interweb works these days. I hadn’t read a review, despite my voracious appetite for the book pages of the proper papers, but came across Charles’s engaging blog, which in turn led to some correspondence. The upshot is,… Continue reading Little Monsters
I expect that, by now, septuagenarian poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen will have his feet up, having completed a remarkable series of gigs in Europe, largely, it seems, to supplement his pension after being ripped off by his accountant. It was quite a coup for the Manchester International Festival to book him for a series… Continue reading Leonard Cohen: First he took Manchester
Playing tunefully away on the right is music by Pantagruel, whose album is available from the estimable Magnatune. They are appearing on simpering Sean Rafferty’s In Tune tonight on Radio 3. I’d love to see them perform.Update: I’ve taken the link down, because I got fed up with the same tune starting up every time… Continue reading Elizium
I haven’t read Clare Wigfall’s short stories, but with a bio like this, she just had to become a writer, didn’t she?:“Wigfall was born in London, but spent the first years of her childhood under the liberal sway of late 1970s California. She returned to England for most of her schooling, but her vital early… Continue reading Wigfall windfall
Woody Guthrie was born today, and I suppose it’s kind of appropriate that he shares his birthday with Bastille day.
As a vegetarian, I can enjoy this with unalloyed pleasure. If you are a carnivore – how can you eat this?