“We were young and we were keen; Europe was in flames, and we were ready for whatever came.” “I used to think that war would make one braver, harder—but instead, it only makes one tired. The glamour of it wears off quickly when you’re pulling bodies from the wreckage.” Train to Nowhere by Anita Leslie Anita Leslie’s Train to Nowhere…
Thanks to the #1970 Club, I’ve spent the spare moments of the past week immersed in The Female Eunuch and all things Germaine (rock groupie, celebrity, author, Shakespearian scholar, wrecking ball, rainforest protector, fearless truth-teller) Greer. I borrowed the book from the library, got stuck in, and then started on the videos of talks, interviews, appearances via YouTube. Not being…
Thanks to the #1970 Club, I have a new mog in my life and a new literary best friend in Mog the Forgetful Cat. “Once there was a cat called Mog. She lived with a family called Thomas. Mog was nice but not very clever. She didn’t understand a lot of things. A lot of other things she forgot. She…
The #1970 Club is starting tomorrow (October 14th) and I’m prepared with some reading and re-reading. 1970 offers a rich literary landscape, from Germaine Greer and Graham Greene to children’s classics like Mr. Gumpy. It ranges from Sexual Politics and Mog, the Forgetful Cat, to works by Susan Hill, Shel Silverstein, Iris Murdoch, and Toni Morrison, alongside Ruth Rendell, Robertson…
We’ve been lucky with the weather in NYC this September. Many bright, warm days The aftermath of the powerful hurricane that has devastated areas of the South East is now giving us a little rain. Not so lucky there where hurricane Helene was deadly across five states after making landfall on Thursday. Some of the worst flooding the South has…
In Meaning Loss, Sanje Ratnavale has written a practical and timely contribution to an important debate that all schools should be having. It’s about curriculum and reimagining the sense of purpose that has too often become mired and muddled by ideological squabbles and all-out hot button culture wars. But first – a digression: Consider the now familiar tale of a…
Half a century ago I received an anonymous telephone call from a woman who said she had found my name and number in a message on a wall in the ladies’ lavs in Victoria Station where, she said, I offered some (unmentionable) services free to all and sundry. Initially taken aback, this incident soon became a cause for much household…
As always, one thing leads to another. This time it’s the post from Gert Loveday’s Fun With Books that highlights Elizabeth Bishop’s tribute to her friend Robert Lowell – her poem North Haven .You can read it here Elizabeth Bishop Islands are Beautiful In an interview, Bishop spoke of North Haven – an island in Penobscot Bay, Maine: I sometimes…
One thing leads to another. How do you get from the Daily Poem in the Paris Review to a re-read of The Loved One and an exploding portable toilet courtesy of Evelyn Waugh? Here’s the Annmarie Drury poem that caught my attention: Walking in Hills of Which One Has Seen Many Paintings Your task differs: to leave the world to…
I received a book in the mail this week. Nothing unusual about that even though I do try to buy my books from my local shop. What is unusual is that this book lists my name in the back. I am among the scores of people who help crowd-source the costs. The book’s subject appealed to me and I was…
It was the Gert Loveday review of Rancid Pansies (it’s an anagram) that set me off to read James Hamilton-Paterson’s trilogy of comic novels that chronicles the outlandish misadventures of Gerald Samper. Part Henry Wilt and part Bertie Wooster with a touch of the growing pains of Adrian Mole, Gerald Samper – of the Shropshire Sampers – is his own…
“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.” You may not remember this, but the whole story of To Kill a Mockingbird is Scout Finch’s account of how and why Jem broke his arm. At best I type with two fingers. I’m now down to one. With the help of a malevolent…
One Last week IntrepidEd News published another of my pieces. This one is about how schools are on the front line of the political and emotional turmoil of these times. The world is in crisis and schools are in the middle of it. Schools are on the front line in an emotionally charged space where existential threats amplify parental worries…
I’m launched on a Wittgenstein project. I thought it was about time I knew more about him and his work than the odd anecdote and the quotation beloved by English teaching theorists: “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” Any Wittgensteinian folks out there with words of advice? All thoughts welcome. I’m easing my way in…
On 14 June 1940, Paris fell to the German Army. The British author Sylvia Townsend Warner wrote in her diary. ‘Paris has fallen — has been abandoned.” The occupation of Paris, the cultural pivot of Europe, and the fall of France which followed two days later were ‘a flaring, presaging comet in all men’s eyes’. The war was not going…