Start with etymology: Don’t neglect this passage, as you read on:Wherein mere time passes idly, like scumUpon the surface of still waters stirred By just alighted coots. They pass us byLike lives, like deaths unreflecting horsemenContemplate at one wise poet’s grey slate, Whilst under stills, the turbulent currentsPlay tuneful ditties and dirges both. SpendMore time … More The passage of time
I saw the new Oliver Hermanus film today, The History of Sound, with Geoff and dear friend Catherine. before going I had make the terrible mistake of seeing some of the reviews of the film, all it seems by people hardly equipped to speak of film as art, for this is precisely what this film … More ‘The History of Sound’: the silenced noise of the non-performative queer story.
Have you ever felt that so much depended on a reading of what is in front of you? I have just made a first reading – fast and furious – through the proof text of a novel not due for publication until, I think, September 2026, Derek Owusu’s The Recovery House, which will be published … More ‘I’m not sure how I ended up here … and I see only blocks of text that are unclear like each word is fused into the next …’. Reading is an aspiration towards a communion.
I wrote a preparatory blog once I booked to see this play. You can access it at this link: https://livesteven.com/2025/11/25/boo-only-comes-out-at-night-so-says-jem-finch-in-the-1962-film-of-to-kill-a-mocking-bird-what-does-it-take-to-make-darkness-visible-this-is-a-blog-preparing-me-to-see-the-touring-produc/. In this blog, I say the following regarding the treatment of Tom Robinson in book and film: Tom is trapped. Tom cannot explain away his apparent ‘sign of guilt’ without exposing the contradictions in the … More This reconfiguration of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ through passive aggression and a heroic Calpurnia is stunning. This blog is on seeing Aaron Sorkin’s play in The Lowry, Manchester, at 2 p.m. on 22 January 2026.
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.
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