Fiction
A Glancing Blow
It was the Dean’s Verger who brought the note up to the organ-loft. The Cathedral bells had been clanging and humming through several hundred changes for at least half an hour, and were beginning to [more…]
Jethro
Arts
Flaming June (ii)
Every time I look at that picture, I seem almost to be looking out from near where I live, although the vista that includes St. Michael’s Mount is less distantly hazy, and the Mount more [more…]
Arts
Flaming June
Lord Leighton’s peerage was, reputedly, the shortest ever, subsisting for one day: ‘Leighton was the bearer of the shortest-lived peerage in history; after only one day, his hereditary peerage became extinct upon his death.’[Wikipedia] 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…]
Language
No one is attacking me
Odysseus, when asked his name by Polyphemus, famously retorted ‘Outis’ – ‘no-one’, or ‘nobody’; thus, when the drunk Cyclops was having his eye gouged out by Odysseus and co., his call for help from his [more…]
13th Century
The Lady of Shallot
‘LOVE THOU THY LAND’: TENNYSON LOVE thou thy land, with love far-brought From out the storied Past, and used Within the Present, but transfused Thro’ future time by power of thought. True love turn’d round [more…]
Literature
Fiction
The Parrot Lady II
Her breakfast was spoiled by the knowledge that, at some point, she would have to tell the waif about the ‘team’s’ visit: not only how to break the news, but when. She decided that it [more…]