Reading Quichotte Salman Rushdie (2019) London, Jonathan Cape This novel ends as impressively as the stature of its author and its shortlisted status might suggest it does. There is constant reflexivity – it is a frameworking novel about the author of a novel within that novel, toying with Barthes ‘death of the author’ concept. It … More Reading ‘Quichotte’ Salman Rushdie (2019) London, Jonathan Cape

Reading Cockroach Ian McEwan (2019) London, Jonathan Cape With no reference to ‘actual cockroaches’, similarities to humans of the cockroaches & humans herein are open for recognition. This is the basic premise: that were cockroaches to metamorphosise (reversing the Kafka direction) into humans, they would support a cause that reduced the human world to disorder, … More Reading Cockroach Ian McEwan (2019) London, Jonathan Cape

First reading William Feaver (2019) The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth London, Bloomsbury Press I think this has to be a ‘first reading’ for me because much will be explained when we read the second volume covering the life lived from 1968. This volume – capacious as it is – ends on a kind of … More First reading of William Feaver’s (2019) ‘The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth’

Pain & Glory: Seeing Almodóvar’s Hamlet: A reflexive Masterpiece See: https://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/45705/1/pedro-almodovar-interview-the-pain-and-the-glory-penelope-cruz-drugs Throughout this film, we see posters of Hamlet and the analogy of the play within a play (and the equally important film within a film) becomes a highly interactive model of the reflexive nature of this film. It reflects the auteur career of Almodóvar … More Pain & Glory: Seeing Almodóvar’s Hamlet: A reflexive Masterpiece

In love and in pain: Cutting into the intersectional being: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous Ocean Vuong (Jonathan Cape). Let’s start with the least of the deep artistic virtues of this book, in which searing pain, achieved beauty and the potential of degradation and shame vie for position and then shimmer into the beauteous fragments … More In love and in pain: Cutting into the intersectional being: ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’ Ocean Vuong (Jonathan Cape).

Steve Bamlett A 10,000 word piece – A proposal How and why does the visual portrayal of figurative groups in landscapes in the post-1939 art of Keith Vaughan relate to changing representations of male ‘homosexuality’ in Britain? This research aims to read critically the ways in which depictions of male-to-male association in Vaughan’s work reflects … More Queer(y)ing Keith Vaughan’s Groups

The aim of this research is to investigate and attempt to read critically the ways in which depictions of male-to-male association in Vaughan’s work reflects on representations in contemporary discourses of male ‘homosexuality’ and its purported aetiology in the period after the war. Discourse is used here in a Foucauldian sense to include not only … More Towards an aim in Queer(y)ing Keith Vaughan