21st Century
The Fall of Boris
All his life Boris had his eyes On winning that most glorious prize, The golden key to Number Ten, The greatest goal of powerful men. A chubby lad at a posh school, His one ambition [more…]
Poetry
20th Century
Stand in the Trench, Achilles*
Most of us, if asked, would be able to name a fair number of WW1 poets and writers without too much hesitation. Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves, Rupert Brooke, Isaac Rosenberg – [more…]
Literature
Cupid’s Dart (ii)
‘Was Blake right? What do you think, dear?’ I was a bit nonplussed by this, since we’d been talking about how ever more pricey things had been becoming lately. ‘Blake?…’ ‘Yes, dear: “Milton was of [more…]
Arts
The tale of John Barleycorn
Whilst listening to some 70’s era music – the time when music demanded competence – I came across a track by Traffic. I listened and remembered hearing it many years ago and that it was [more…]
Literature
Archaeological Limericks
Both English and, to a much greater extent, Scottish and Irish Gaelic are full of words spelt very differently from the way they are pronounced. These are ‘archaeological’ pronunciations reflecting the way the language [more…]
Literature
Bird Brains?
I’m not at all sure now how we got on to the subject of birds, but I was talking (I can hear her now, ‘To, dear, not with: the Americans get so hopelessly confused about [more…]
21st Century
Return to the Inferno
Set thirty years in the future As I reclined upon a heavenly cloud, Imbibing a celestial Chianti, I heard a voice crying my name aloud; ‘Twas Virgil in his toga, calling, ‘Dante, There’s work to [more…]
Literature
Miss Pronter’s Prescient Verses
My Dear Friend, Miss. Pronter, has forgiven, but hardly forgotten, my betise in allowing some of her verses to be put forward here, under a mangled version of her name (‘You claim to be a [more…]
Arts
Scorn Not The Sonnet
Scorn not the Sonnet Thus wrote Wordsworth, and it’s probably true that sonnets are second only to limericks in the poetry popularity stakes. Both forms have the advantage of being short and memorable. But where [more…]