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.
The Folk Hall at New Earswick. My first go at this prompt related to a vague memory of the recitation of a speech from Measure for Measure (see it at this link). Since then, my friend, Ann, who has been my friend since we both went to Wooldale Primary School, has reminded me of much … More An Addendum to my first version of this: My friend Ann says I Recited ‘The Collar’
Ian McEwan states in his novel’s title a concern with What We Can Know. Clearly, this concern with the nature and limits of knowledge is central to the conduct of history including predictive history, biography and the study of the art or even counterfactual forms of those things. However, the epigram of this novel, taken … More Ian McEwan states in his novel’s title a concern with ‘What We Can Know’. Clearly, this concern with the nature and limits of knowledge is central to the conduct of history including predictive history, biography and the study of the art or even counterfactual forms of those things. However, the epigram of this novel, taken from the biographer Richard Holmes, implies that biography embodies ‘human truths poised between fact and fiction’ themselves which requires the question of ‘what we can know’ but also goes on to ask ‘what we can believe, and finally what we can love’.
When Tennyson published the lyric usually recalled as a Christmas and New Year hymn in 1850, he was as keen to eradicate old corruptions as welcome new vigour, although he lefts the politics of the change he wanted vague in order not to contradict any powers that be. The point of the poem remains is … More Ring out the darkness of the land! If only!
Apologies for another nit-picking response but this question embeds a very poor assumption that events are a cause of well-being or ill-being, the former being positive the latter negative. It is an assumption built into that facile tool in developmental psychology, the Life-Events Inventory. Here is a description of it, followed by a brief history … More Events have no agency in them. Responses to events do have such agency.
“It’s not wholly unlike seeing people talk about Faerie”. [1] ‘Do you ever see wild animals?’ is a question trapped in the net of binaries. This blog takes as its case study Amal El-Mohtar (2025) ‘The River Has Roots’, London, Arcadia, Quercus Books. ‘Wild animals’ possibly don’t exist except as the ‘other’ to two norms … More “It’s not wholly unlike seeing people talk about Faerie”. ‘Do you ever see wild animals?’ is a question trapped in the net of binaries. This blog takes as its case study Amal El-Mohtar’s ‘The River Has Roots’.
The fever of seeking recognition is at least one of the characteristics in the origin of the social, or aristocratic, vampire in literary myth. We could all do fame-seeking! A case study based on John William Polidori’s life and writing, [OR], ‘He watched him; and the very impossibility of forming an idea of the character … More The fever of seeking recognition is at least one of the characteristics in the origin of the social, or aristocratic, vampire in literary myth. We could all do less fame-seeking! A case study based on John William Polidori’s life and writing, OR …
Five things at which I’m good; You’re asking meTo raise my self-esteem, to fly a flagThat speaks of five skills that could claim to beThe sum of my accomplishment, the bag In which my goods, being tied up firmlyCan be cast in the balance that will weighAgainst hydra-headed infirmity, That stands on stilts to be … More Five things at which I’m good; You’re asking me!
I can’t remember exactly when it was, other than in the early years at grammar schoo! [1] Being a member of a drama group led to the volunteer who ran that group to enter her flock into a spoken English competition. We each had to choose a speech or poem to read. Most competitors went … More My memory of choosing a speech to perform in young teenage in a spoken English talent competition
That place is in the eyes and is the creation of the cognitive-affective machinery we all possess. It can even be simulated as if we were there in a fine performance, consciously enacted. We saw a fine multi-award winning film last night: Since The Last Time We Met, by Matìas de Leis Correa, a brilliant … More That place is in the eyes and is the creation of the cognitive-affective machinery we all possess. It can even be simulated as if we were there in a fine performance, consciously enacted.
Is this Flesh edible? Is it my Meat? Should it Be? Preparing or Being Meat: Flesh on show. A lot of what I want to say in this blog will refer to a distinction between the word ‘flesh’ and the word ‘meat’ which some consider to be essential to the context of referral – ‘meat’ … More Is this Flesh edible? Is it my Meat? Should it Be?
Late Medieval artists ‘shaped a society-wide fascination with all that bodies could become’: An exhibition and book charts the reasons why, using queer theory,there is an inevitable relationship between the desire to create art and ‘bodies that were betwixt and between, changed or actively changing’. This blog investigates The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new book … More Late Medieval artists ‘shaped a society-wide fascination with all that bodies could become’: An exhibition and book charts the reasons why, using queer theory, there is an inevitable relationship between the desire to create art and ‘bodies that were betwixt and between, changed or actively changing’. This blog investigates The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new book by Melanie Holcomb & Nancy Thebaut (2025) ‘Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, And Gender in The Middle Ages’.
Remove the artifice from intelligence: the real threat of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the presumption that we know what intelligence is and how it operates. The definition of Artificial Intelligence in Wikipedia seems a good-enough start: Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field … More Remove the artifice from intelligence: the real threat of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the presumption that we know what intelligence is and how it operates.
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