Janet Lewison

It is now nearly 50 years since Fraser, who is 70 next Tuesday, published her first history book, a retelling of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Amanda Foreman, whose 1998 life… Read More »Antonia Fraser

All About My Mother (Todo Sobre Mi Madre) A sensational film. The past is only ever finished, never finished with! Like the wonderful ‘Volver’ this film suggests that nothing is… Read More »All About My mother – Pedro Almodovar

Coming back to La Mancha is always to come back to the maternal breast.During the writing of the script and the filming, my mother was always present and very near.… Read More »Almodovar on 'Volver'

There is definitely a correspondence or synchronicity here.   “Until I was in the forties—I could settle the date by seeing when I wrote To the Lighthouse, but am too… Read More »Woolf and Almodovar

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming.… Read More »Mrs Dalloway

‘One sees a fin passing far out. What image can I reach to convey what I mean? Really there is none, I think.’ Woolf writing in her diary of 1925… Read More »To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

Her real relationship is with her daughter, her sister, her mother and with her garrulous women-friends and neighbours – all chattering, laughing and, at a funeral, mumbling prayers like a… Read More »Guardian on Almodovar – an extract from an excellent review

What other series would dare take us back to Creation after the Christmas Turkey? This Xmas special was littered with ironies – grandiose and poignantly small. ‘Human….is that optional?’ Catherine… Read More »Dr Who and Creation Theory?

‘O, full of scorpions is my mind…’ ( Macbeth) If each man kills the thing he loves, then Macbeth’s murder of King Duncan propels him into terminal nightmare. The haunting… Read More »Oliver Twist Charles Dickens

  Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief… Read More »A Christmas Carol Dickens

Any thoughts on this revisionist biography?

Syntax I want to call you thou, the soundof the shape of the startof a kiss — like this, thou —and to say, after, I love,thou, I love, thou I… Read More »Rapturous to a fault!

MATTENS I cannot ope mine eyes,But thou art ready there to catchMy morning-soul and sacrifice:Then we must needs for that day make a match. My God, what is a heart?Silver,… Read More »a healing

In a wild essay entitled,’ Lorenzo the closet Queen’ Carter provocatively suggests of Women In Love that ‘ Lawrence enjoys being a girl. If we do no trust the teller… Read More »Angela Carter on DHLawrence/DHL and swingers

Reading the story again after looking at KMansfield’s study in marital horror – ‘A Married Man’s Story.’  Fascinating to notice the similar preoccupation with airlessness and the outside. DHlawrence renders… Read More »Illness and DHLawrence Virgin and Gypsy

CHILDSONG: ARE YOU LISTENING?   Some Poems by Carol Ann Duffy, Walter De La Mare, Blake & Lorca.,     Listening is basic to human communication.  If we don’t listen… Read More »Barry Wood on Carol Ann Duffy and Listening.

My overridng impression of the story is that it deals with ani individaul trying to escape suffocating restriction, Ironically perhaps these restrictions are ‘housed’ in a home, and need to… Read More »DHLawrence Virgin and Gypsy

‘It is evening. Supper is over.We have left the small, cold dining room, we have come back to the sitting room where there is a fire. All is usual. I… Read More »A Married Man's Story by Katherine Mansfield

I wonder if the date of the story is significant in that it was ‘found’ in 1930 after DHL’s death and thus was a ‘last text’…as such it would be… Read More »DHLawrence and Illness in The Virgin and the Gypsy

Do you feel rather at sea with your extended piece of written work,dissertation, or essay? How effective is your language? Do you want to change your essay style for the… Read More »Are you concerned about your writing?

I do believe the root of all my sickness is a sort of rage,” D.H. Lawrence wrote during the last months of his life to the poet Wytter Bynner. Whether… Read More »More ON DHL and death and rage

After a visit from the Lawrences to her villa in Tuscany, Lady Ida Sitwell wrote, “A Mr. D.H. Lawrence came over the other day, a funny little petit-maitre of a… Read More »Views On DHL

Realism is just one of the arbitrary views man takes of man. It sees us all as little ant-like creatures toiling against the odds of circumstance. . . . I… Read More »DHL views on realism

You know that I need to go away, away, away: yes, yes, I can’t go on here anymore. You know there are always the angels and the archangels, thrones, powers,… Read More »More DHLawrence

He did have a real ‘thing’ for fairytales:   There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for… Read More »DHL and fairytales

Did you know? Poets & Writers John Keats, the English Romantic poet, died of TB in 1821, only a year after his first symptom. Robert Lewis Stevenson, author of “Treasure… Read More »Writers and TB

‘Took me about a year to figure out it was that I shouldn’t a let you out a my sights.Too later then by a long, long while’ Perhaps all love… Read More »Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain

Any thoughts on DHL’s novellla?

  Prayer Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayerutters itself. So, a woman will lifther head from the sieve of her hands and stareat the minims sung by a… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy Prayer – a perfect poem?