Only the wanderer Knows England’s graces, Or can anew see clear Familiar faces. And who loves joy as he That dwells in shadows? Do not forget me quite, O Severn meadows. Ivor Bertie Gurney was born in Gloucester on 28 August 1890: his father was a tailor, and he came from humble origins. His mother… Read More from Ivor Gurney
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Sylvia Plath
A very welcome guest post to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Sylvia Plath, contributed by my dear and esteemed friend Jackie Leach Scully, another graduate of Newnham College. There are a lot of women of a certain age – around 50 – who have, let’s say, an ambivalent relationship with the story… Read More from Sylvia Plath
Arthur Bispo do Rosário
When I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see their show of the work of Arthur Bispo do Rosario, the nice ladies on the information desk had no idea what I was talking about. It took some searching to find the rooms dedicated to this visionary Brazilian artist. You won’t find him on… Read More from Arthur Bispo do Rosário
Ian Curtis
I did not discover the music of Joy Division until a few years after the death of their lead singer, Ian Curtis, but it was love at first sight. Songs of doomed romance like ‘Love will tear us apart’ expressed what most troubled teenagers were feeling. Never was the gloom and despair and solipsism of… Read More from Ian Curtis
Janet Frame
The Lagoon, Janet Frame’s first volume of short stories, sat on my shelf for years. Only when I visited Dunedin, her home town, did I discover that it was that book, or rather the prize awarded to it, which saved the author from a lobotomy. On my last flight back to Europe from New Zealand,… Read More from Janet Frame
Winston Churchill
“Only a man who knew what it was to discern a gleam of hope in a hopeless situation, whose courage was beyond reason, and whose aggressive spirit burned at its fiercest when he was hemmed in and surrounded by enemies, could have given emotional reality to the words of defiance which rallied and sustained us… Read More from Winston Churchill
Virginia Woolf
“As an experience, madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets as sanity does.” I never thought I would like Virginia Woolf: I thought… Read More from Virginia Woolf
Isaac Newton
“I know not what I appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell, whilest the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” Born prematurely, and abandoned… Read More from Isaac Newton