Tag: writing

Can ‘principles define how you live’ if you live in the world as it is. This blog looks at this by examining a recent (and edited) play text of George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’, which we see live-streamed on 23rd October at the Gala Theatre Durham.

October 6, 2025

Can ‘principles define how you live’, if you live in the world as it is. This blog looks at this by examining a recent (and edited) play text of George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’, which we see live-streamed on 23rd October at the Gala Theatre Durham. Geoff and I will be seeing this play … More Can ‘principles define how you live’ if you live in the world as it is. This blog looks at this by examining a recent (and edited) play text of George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’, which we see live-streamed on 23rd October at the Gala Theatre Durham.

The appreciation of art is not a matter of ‘personal choice’ or ‘favour’; it is a duty. This is so not only for its maker but its reading, for reading is, in part, co-making.

October 2, 2025

The appreciation of art is not a matter of ‘personal choice’ or ‘favour’; it is a duty. This is so not only for its maker but its reading, for reading is, in part, co-making. Duty, of course, does not exclude personal pleasure if it does exclude banal ideas of choice between pleasures. The quotation and … More The appreciation of art is not a matter of ‘personal choice’ or ‘favour’; it is a duty. This is so not only for its maker but its reading, for reading is, in part, co-making.

‘The departed are yet to arrive / … / but the roads are all laid out: /’ There is no ideal time to pay more attention to the details past than the death that inevitably defines a ‘life’ and picks out its salient meaning. This is a blog referring to a first reading of Simon Armitage (2025) ‘New Cemetery’.

September 30, 2025

‘The departed are yet to arrive / … / but the roads are all laid out: /’ [1] There is no ideal time to pay more attention to the details past than the death that inevitably defines a ‘life’ and picks out its salient meaning. This is a blog referring to a first reading of … More ‘The departed are yet to arrive / … / but the roads are all laid out: /’ There is no ideal time to pay more attention to the details past than the death that inevitably defines a ‘life’ and picks out its salient meaning. This is a blog referring to a first reading of Simon Armitage (2025) ‘New Cemetery’.

‘“Twa Boabs”, the man laughs. “A matching pair!”’ You wait forever for a queer Ayrshire Scottish artist intent on rivaling the phallocentric Robert Burns, then ‘Two Roberts’ come at once. This is a blog on Damian Barr (2025) ‘The Two Roberts’.

September 21, 2025

‘“Twa Boabs”, the man laughs. “A matching pair!”’[1] You wait forever for a queer Ayrshire Scottish artist intent on rivaling the phallocentric Robert Burns, then ‘Two Roberts’ come at once. This is a blog on Damian Barr (2025) The Two Roberts, Edinburgh, Canongate. The power of Damian Barr’s novel The Two Roberts lies in its … More ‘“Twa Boabs”, the man laughs. “A matching pair!”’ You wait forever for a queer Ayrshire Scottish artist intent on rivaling the phallocentric Robert Burns, then ‘Two Roberts’ come at once. This is a blog on Damian Barr (2025) ‘The Two Roberts’.

The best piece of advice is to read Arundhati Roy’s ‘Mother Mary Comes To me’ as soon as possible. This is a blog on that with a note on re-reading Freud’s ‘A Child Is Being Beaten’.

September 18, 2025

The best piece of advice is to read Arundhati Roy’s ‘Mother Mary Comes To Me‘ as soon as possible. There is an episode in Arundhati Roy’s 2025 memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me in which her brother, having brought home a school report saying he was an ‘average student’, is seen by her taken into … More The best piece of advice is to read Arundhati Roy’s ‘Mother Mary Comes To me’ as soon as possible. This is a blog on that with a note on re-reading Freud’s ‘A Child Is Being Beaten’.

Topics are so aery a thing that you are only ever ‘informed about’ them, but as for ‘subjects’: only they can ‘inform’ one.

September 10, 2025

Topics are so aery a thing that you are only ever ‘informed about’ them, but as for ‘subjects’: only they can ‘inform’ one. As so often, this question attracted me not because I have anything substantial to say about it in answer but because so much of its terminology has had importance to me in … More Topics are so aery a thing that you are only ever ‘informed about’ them, but as for ‘subjects’: only they can ‘inform’ one.

Do we give up on one or all of the ‘words that bind us’ at our peril? It might be better to understand why words are multivalent: this is a blog on visiting the Magna Carta exhibition at Durham Cathedral on Wednesday 3rd September 2025.

September 3, 2025

Do we give up on one or all of the ‘words that bind us’ at our peril? It might be better to understand why words are multivalent: this is a blog on visiting the Magna Carta exhibition at Durham Cathedral on Wednesday 3rd September 2025. The exhibition runs from July 11 to November 2, 2025. “To no … More Do we give up on one or all of the ‘words that bind us’ at our peril? It might be better to understand why words are multivalent: this is a blog on visiting the Magna Carta exhibition at Durham Cathedral on Wednesday 3rd September 2025.

This is a blog on the rich novel that is Jonathan Buckley’s (2025) ‘One Boat’.

August 31, 2025

In metafiction, the narrator may make ad-hoc decisions about the nature of the fiction and adopt, if not fully implement, them in the very moment of narrating that fiction, as in the end of  Jonathan Buckley’s 2025 novel, One Boat where it appears that the narrator decides (on authoritative masculine persuasion) that her book is … More This is a blog on the rich novel that is Jonathan Buckley’s (2025) ‘One Boat’.

It was Jenny Saville’s new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, ‘The Anatomy of Painting’.

August 22, 2025

In an interview with Sarah Howgate in the catalogue of the 2025 exhibition The Anatomy of Painting, Jenny Saville says that some part of her decisions and choices of method and technique as a painter is about freeing ‘up time to think about the way I’m applying paint – the mark-making, paint consistency and colour. … More It was Jenny Saville’s new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, ‘The Anatomy of Painting’.

Somehow twilight at evening draws us to favour it. Why? After all it promises us nothing but the night, unless we hope to make the next day the first of the ‘rest of our life’!

August 18, 2025

Somehow twilight at evening draws us to favour it. Why? After all it promises us nothing but the night, unless we hope to make the next day the first of the ‘rest of our life’! When I was a student at University College London, I used to find myself walking through Russell Square to and … More Somehow twilight at evening draws us to favour it. Why? After all it promises us nothing but the night, unless we hope to make the next day the first of the ‘rest of our life’!

If I use the verb ‘to write’, do I really mean that what I write must or should endure

August 17, 2025

The best known quatrain of Persian Poetry, in stolid Victorian translation is that from what The Poetry Foundation calls the ‘Rubáiyát, his collection of hundreds of quatrains (or rubais), was first translated from Farsi into English in 1859 by Edward Fitzgerald’, attributed to Omar Khayyam. There are versions on versions of the quatrains translated, not least by Fitzgerald . … More If I use the verb ‘to write’, do I really mean that what I write must or should endure

On the Edinburgh book festival: why I still go and on whether I should keep going.                  

August 11, 2025

The Edinburgh Book Festival may be anybody’s kicking post for at least some of the time. For years, it was supported financially by Baillie Gifford with known assets in some very illiberal regimes and ethically if not legally (as far as we know) shady practices. That tie now severed, the right wing press led by … More On the Edinburgh book festival: why I still go and on whether I should keep going.