Born in 1954. Chequered career including Lecturer in English, Social Worker and Lecturer in Social Work. Had breaks related to mental health that also meant I worked in social care. Now retired.
Richard Holmes is the literary biographer of the age, timing that age from my own time of literary awareness, and he, at last, has reached out to Tennyson, if confined (probably thankfully) to the Young Tennyson, before that poet became wrapped around with the populist British imperialism that most harms his reputation for people like … More Not Drowning but Waving in The Boundless Deep.
In reading this question, the contemporary and most frequent use of the word ‘complaint’ will be uppermost, which is mainly related to an expression of grievance or satisfaction leading to seeking a means of redress from the person or institution providing those goods or services which are found faulty or dangerous. It is part of … More From making myself feel better by expressing my suffering to finding a means of redress for a grievance.
Worthwhile modern readings which root Peter Grimes in the experience of Benjamin Britten as a queer man may be available, although I think Phillip Brett’s Cambridge monograph on the opera may have served as a last word on why it both requires that perspective and why it is insufficient to provide a satisfactory reading on its … More Is there a rationale or purpose for a queer reading of Benjamin Britten’s operatic drama, ‘Peter Grimes’?
Ask that question to Daedalus? Would he uninvent the Labyrinth? In Seamus Sullivan’s bold debut novel his character, Persephone, the (part-time) Greek Goddess of the Underworld, informs her prominent subject, the dead Daedalus, that, ‘Heroism isn’t strength or bravery,…. It’s the conviction in your innermost heart that the entire story is about you’. This blog … More Ask that question to Daedalus? Would he uninvent the Labyrinth? In Seamus Sullivan’s bold debut novel his character, Persephone, the (part-time) Greek Goddess of the Underworld, informs her prominent subject, the dead Daedalus, that, ‘Heroism isn’t strength or bravery,…. It’s the conviction in your innermost heart that the entire story is about you’. This blog discusses a superlative addition to much of the chatty mess that is the novel focused on sex/gender in Greek mythological heroes: Seamus Sullivan (2025) ‘Daedalus Is Dead’.
Oh what a tangled web is this prompt question! Even if we discount the current fashion in invoking the word ‘positive’ all the time, the question seems loaded. What is the implication? Is it that given the chance, people will write about a ‘negative example’ of where they’ve felt loved? It seems impossible then to … More Let us not refuse ‘to accept the dynamic in love that breaks through barriers and boundaries set by normative standards’.
‘Leisure’ is one of those few words that has not much change its range of meaning from its etymological origins – although the analogy with ‘pleasure’, and the adoption of a spelling change from that association is interesting. leisure (n.)c. 1300, leisir, “free time, time at one’s disposal,” also (early 14c.) “opportunity to do something, chance, … More ‘Sour leisure’ gives ‘sweet leave’: but to do what?
‘without transformation / Men become wolves on any slight occasion’. This blog takes as its starting point, Jacob Kerr (2025) The Wolf of Whindale, London. Is it conceivable that, asked to choose an animal you like, you would choose one you consider yourself to be like. There is no certain link or even line of … More ‘without transformation / Men become wolves on any slight occasion’. This blog takes as its starting point, Jacob Kerr (2025) ‘The Wolf of Whindale’, London, Serpent’s Tail.
Baz came into the life of my and my husband, Geoff, in September 2025 from Darlington Dog’s Trust. He was 10, and his history, according to his adoption form, was somewhat shaded by rare single issues of behaviour that have challenged human owners and foster-carers in the past and have made getting insurance difficult and, … More ‘Dog problems usually have a human component. …. Always remember to consider your role in frustrating canine scenarios’. How can I offer to teach you that which I cannot easily learn? The mutuality in the meaning of trust.
Wilfred Bion reading Plato, what a combination! Summarising the ideas of Wilfred Bion on group psycho-social dynamics, in his November 2024 Linked-In paper on ‘Understanding Group Dynamics Through the Lens of Wilfred Bion: A Guide for Leaders’, Rafael Chiuzi, an organisational psychologist, says that, according to Bion: …. leaders often become the focal point of … More Here is the issue with Sir Keir Starmer. The point of a good leader is the deconstruction of the myth of the agentive forceful leader, able to actively carry forward into fulfillment all requisite tasks to meet group needs. Indeed, without this, leaders become ‘the focal point of group projections, idealized as saviors (sic.) or blamed as scapegoats’.
Source: https://observer.co.uk/culture/books/article/the-sunday-poem-burning-car-by-andrew-mcmillan I suppose even physical clutter is the residue of memories, sometimes transmuted into obsessional and repetitive images – the better if repeated with a kind of nuance that varies each token from others in its type of memory. I use the words type and token as in philosophical metaphysics, explained in the link … More Memories clutter but are dangerous to seek to clear out sometimes.
Professor Anne Rasmussen at Kings College London Professor Anne Rasmussen wrote a blog on the Kings College London website in July 2025 summarising the results of a study by herself with Tobias Heide-Jorgensen and Gregory Eady (University of Copenhagen), using AI generated models of online post types that had qualities deemed to ‘more productive’ of … More The plea for improved ‘communication styles’ still needs to take into account the fact that the ‘truth’ is not always a ‘compromise’ between ‘opinions’.
Uninventing the myth of Shakespeare: seeing the film of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet. There is a real issue of ontology involved in this question – for it raises the question not only of what to choose but what, being ‘uninvented’ that something might be, if indeed it could be anything at all, for to uninvent ‘it’ … More Uninventing the myth of Shakespeare: seeing the film of Maggie O’Farrell’s ‘Hamnet’.
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