The incredible lightness of mind of the film critics and Emerald Fennell’s resumed brilliance in “‘Wuthering Heights'”.

February 17, 2026

The incredible lightness of mind of the film critics and Emerald Fennell’s resumed brilliance in  ‘Wuthering Heights’ Right from the get-go, Emerald Fennell plays games with her trade-mark reputation for an excess of sexual content and with a deliberate turning of the first and only book by Emily Bronte, into a tale about childlike fascination … More The incredible lightness of mind of the film critics and Emerald Fennell’s resumed brilliance in “‘Wuthering Heights'”.

Once we accept interiority as primary, people aren’t around you or you around them. We are mutually absorbed. Some reflections halfway through Mark Haddon’s 2026 memoir ‘Leaving Home’.

February 16, 2026

Once we accept interiority as primary, people aren’t around you or you around them. We are mutually absorbed. Some reflections halfway through Mark Haddon’s 2026 memoir ‘Leaving Home’. Thoughts dedicated to a dear friend, Joanne. I am reading Mark Haddon’s new memoir at the moment called Leaving  Home, and will blog on it with as … More Once we accept interiority as primary, people aren’t around you or you around them. We are mutually absorbed. Some reflections halfway through Mark Haddon’s 2026 memoir ‘Leaving Home’.

‘quibus ille viros, quibus excitat urbes;’. It bores me that we still think of men as stuff to be excited by targeted hate, and targeted hate alone

February 14, 2026

It is an ancient theme, as ancient as the first epics of war between tribes and peoples that certainly precede Homer but refined by the Romans into a dream of men as made of steel, flexed into active form by fire. Hence though Homer’s The Iliad mourns war in telling of it, Vergil’s The Aeneid … More ‘quibus ille viros, quibus excitat urbes;’. It bores me that we still think of men as stuff to be excited by targeted hate, and targeted hate alone

A week of Hamlets: [2] From some perspectives ‘Hamlet’ is a play about taking responsibility for your country.

February 13, 2026

A week of Hamlets: [2] From some perspectives ‘Hamlet’ is a play about taking responsibility for your country. Part 1 of this blog can be found at this link. Yesterday Geoff and I saw, after its first launch, the streamed version of the National Theatre’s most recent Hamlet from the Lyttleton Theatre. The choice of … More A week of Hamlets: [2] From some perspectives ‘Hamlet’ is a play about taking responsibility for your country.

The best gift I have ever received is to allow darkness and obscurity to work on me, as in preference to relying only on what people present as light and clarity, or as Lorca says, ‘La luz me troncha las alas / y el dolor de mi tristeza / va mojando los recuerdos / en la fuente de la idea’. [Translated by D K. Fennell: ‘The light trims my wings / and the pang of my gloom / will moisten the memories / at the font of knowledge’ (the last line seems somewhat to travesty the Spanish)]. What follows is a blog containing some dark or obscure (for Lorca’s ‘oscura’) thoughts about Lorca as invoked by a new novel: Neil Rollinson (2026) ‘The Dead Don’t Bleed’.

February 12, 2026

The best gift I have ever received is to allow darkness and obscurity to work on me, as in preference to relying only on what people present as light and clarity, or as Lorca says, ‘La luz me troncha las alas / y el dolor de mi tristeza / va mojando los recuerdos / en … More The best gift I have ever received is to allow darkness and obscurity to work on me, as in preference to relying only on what people present as light and clarity, or as Lorca says, ‘La luz me troncha las alas / y el dolor de mi tristeza / va mojando los recuerdos / en la fuente de la idea’. [Translated by D K. Fennell: ‘The light trims my wings / and the pang of my gloom / will moisten the memories / at the font of knowledge’ (the last line seems somewhat to travesty the Spanish)]. What follows is a blog containing some dark or obscure (for Lorca’s ‘oscura’) thoughts about Lorca as invoked by a new novel: Neil Rollinson (2026) ‘The Dead Don’t Bleed’.

If people really chose to be around those that offered most to them, they would not choose people by their limitations. Let’s go for people like Dean Atta, as described in his 2024 memoir, ‘Person Unlimited: An Ode to My Black Queer body’.

February 11, 2026

‘…, I no longer blamed myself for the sexual assaults I’d survived. I saw it like this: I could let myself sink in self-blame and self-pity or I could float and swim in this open water full of ambiguity’. (p. 241) ‘Love is abundant, an unlimited resource’ (p. 256). The aesthetics of the unlimited in … More If people really chose to be around those that offered most to them, they would not choose people by their limitations. Let’s go for people like Dean Atta, as described in his 2024 memoir, ‘Person Unlimited: An Ode to My Black Queer body’.

A week of Hamlets: [1] To start, there is a tendency to see Shakespeare’s character Hamlet as a part nightmare dream version of one’s autobiography. Riz Ahmed has won the prize for the finest version of such projects.

February 10, 2026

A week of Hamlets: [1] To start, there is a tendency to see Shakespeare’s character Hamlet as a part nightmare dream version of one’s autobiography. Riz Ahmed has won the prize for the finest version of such projects. For a long time, literary critics have insisted that to see elements of the biographical in the … More A week of Hamlets: [1] To start, there is a tendency to see Shakespeare’s character Hamlet as a part nightmare dream version of one’s autobiography. Riz Ahmed has won the prize for the finest version of such projects.

‘I come from shepherd’s pie and Sunday roast, / jerk chicken and stuffed vine leaves. / I come from travelling through my taste buds but loving where I live.’ Dean Atta gets it right!

February 8, 2026

I am currently reading Dean Atta’s memoir, Person Unlimited: An Ode to My Black Queer Body and will blog on it later, but surely Atta is on the ball about ‘patriotism’ in his poem I Come From (read it here: Atta, D. (2019) ‘I Come From’, Feminist Dissent, 4, pp. 158-159. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.31273/fd.n4.2019.410) . … More ‘I come from shepherd’s pie and Sunday roast, / jerk chicken and stuffed vine leaves. / I come from travelling through my taste buds but loving where I live.’ Dean Atta gets it right!

If Édouard Louis were to answer this question, he would date his age and that of his parents not in conventional space or time but in the never-to-be-ended phenomenon of the ‘escape’ of each from the determination of the other, should that ever be possible. This is a blog on Édouard Louis (2024) ‘Monique Escapes’ (trans. John Lambert, 2026).London, Harvill, Vintage.

February 7, 2026

If Édouard Louis were to answer this question, he would date his age and that of his parents not in conventional space or time but in the never-to-be-ended phenomenon of the ‘escape’ of each from the determination of the other, should that ever be possible. This is a blog on Édouard Louis (2024) ‘Monique Escapes’ … More If Édouard Louis were to answer this question, he would date his age and that of his parents not in conventional space or time but in the never-to-be-ended phenomenon of the ‘escape’ of each from the determination of the other, should that ever be possible. This is a blog on Édouard Louis (2024) ‘Monique Escapes’ (trans. John Lambert, 2026).London, Harvill, Vintage.

Losing interest in ‘the double’ in the interests of the polymorphous. Do some themes in psycho-pathological fiction get overworked?: Using as a test case Graeme Macrae Burnet’s 2025 novel ‘Benbecula’.

February 6, 2026

Losing interest in ‘the double’ in the interests of the polymorphous. Do some themes in psycho-pathological fiction get overworked: Using as a test case Graeme Macrae Burnet’s 2025 novel Benbecula, Edinburgh, Polygon. I used to be fascinated by duality – that a thing we thought of as one thing was, in fact, two things: even … More Losing interest in ‘the double’ in the interests of the polymorphous. Do some themes in psycho-pathological fiction get overworked?: Using as a test case Graeme Macrae Burnet’s 2025 novel ‘Benbecula’.

Let’s take a break from the malign influence of the rightwards-tending populist feminists’ treatment of binary sexual difference, as, in Foucault’s words, ‘a causal principle, an omnipresent meaning’. Simple formulae have popular appeal but undermine equality based on diversity. Let’s celebrate Stephen F. Eisenman (1989) ‘Gauguin’s Skirt’, London, Thames & Hudson.

February 5, 2026

Let’s take a break from the malign influence of the populist feminists’ treatment of binary sexual difference, as, in Foucault’s words, ‘a causal principle, an omnipresent meaning’. Simple formulae validating themselves as ‘biological science’, not biological oversimplification,  have popular appeal but undermine equality based on diversity. Let’s celebrate Stephen F. Eisenman (1989) ‘Gauguin’s Skirt’, London, … More Let’s take a break from the malign influence of the rightwards-tending populist feminists’ treatment of binary sexual difference, as, in Foucault’s words, ‘a causal principle, an omnipresent meaning’. Simple formulae have popular appeal but undermine equality based on diversity. Let’s celebrate Stephen F. Eisenman (1989) ‘Gauguin’s Skirt’, London, Thames & Hudson.