Scandalous mourning in the work of Amy Bloom In bereavement counselling they use the term- complicated grief and I often wonder what other kind there is. Well of course I know. It is the neat and tidy secret pain that shows enough of itself to suggest love but not enough of itself to disturb. This paper [...]

I THE opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea, And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free– The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me. II The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless [...]

In August 1917, Virginia invited Katherine to spend a few days with them at Asheham. At the end of July, Katherine had been staying with Ottoline Morrell at Garsington; she evoked its enchanting garden in a letter to Virginia which has not survived. Virginia, writing to Ottoline on 15 August, enlarged upon her rapturous account: [...]

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of [...]

The Short Story.   Seminar Schedule.  1)    Introductory Session: Hemingway’s Cat in the Rain; Lydia Davis.2)    Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher; The Pit and the Pendulum3)     Henry James; The Turn of the Screw4)    Maupassant: Boule de Suif and Madame Tellier’s Establishment. 5)    Katherine Mansfield: The Doll’s House; At the Bay6)    Virginia [...]

Away from home. It has been so long since she used a metaphor!  Metaphors are our means of bringing our disparate worlds together through words. Home in this brief tale seems both a literal and metaphorical place. We are fortunate indeed perhaps if we are truly home at home. Many relationships falter when a we realise [...]