Literature
Sitting Where The Drums Were Found
A country child I roamed around from an early age, it was safe then, where these stone drums were found, I knew about them from my mother who had lived very close by and ancient [more…]
Poetry
Literature
An Old Man’s Musings Part Two
I do not look back in anger. Rather I look at what I have (and have not) accomplished. I have four children; the eldest is a successful software engineer though I have not seen him [more…]
Literature
An Old Man’s Musings Part One
‘ But at my back I always hear, Time’s winged Chariot hurrying near …’ Andrew Marvell ‘What is this life if full of care, We have no time to stand and stare……’ William Henry Davies [more…]
Conservatives
Which Leader?
Can you guess the leader each of these poems refers to…? Sir A. Tool I’m not a wealthy toolmaker I’m a wealthy toolmaker’s son. He made A Tool, not much cop That the UK he [more…]
Literature
How, by not singing in Chapel, Nerissa came to an Untimely End
I never did quite discover Miss Pronter’s exact connection with a once-well-known – not to say notorious – Girls’ Boarding School in Berkshire, but she claimed that the then-Chaplain, having delivered this, left the script [more…]
20th Century
Of Poetics and Politics
How do you like your Poetry? Richly allusive, with detectable rhythm, a certain musicality about it? Or do you prefer a stripped-down, unembellished terseness-to-the-point-of-inarticulacy, a Tacitean, telegraphic brevity? Whichever, preference is yours, would you consider [more…]
Literature
Ulysses – Alfred Lord Tennyson
It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and [more…]
Literature
The Platform at Aston Rowant
From Aston Rowant to Kingston Blount From halt to halt, it beetled west For miles below the Chiltern crest A country line, of no account .. Now trains no longer skirt these hills And fencing [more…]
Literature
The Station at Aston Rowant
Based on a lyrical passage in The Oxford, Gloucester and Milford Haven Road, by Charles G Harper. Harper’s entire oeuvre of “Road” books has long been out of print, but no travel writer I know [more…]