How to read a play
We are encouraged to believe, wrongly I think, that a play must be seen to be appreciated. To read a play, we are told, is to miss most of what … Continue reading
Pay what you can afford
We are often exhorted to work on our physical forces by walking or cycling or working out in the gym. But it is not only British bodies that have grown obese, the same thing has happened to British imaginations.
Lord, what fools these normal people be!
Young people take themselves too seriously. It’s part of growing up and easy for grown-ups to make fun of.
Making it up
Each new novel is the start of another phone call from a scammer.
Shakespeare the realist
Shakespeare could always see the funny side. His first comedy, A Comedy of Errors, was based on Menaechmi (The Twins) by the Roman playwright, Plautus, the Ben Elton of ancient … Continue reading
A poem by R.S.Thomas
Fishing, not one of R.S.Thomas’s best known poems, but one of his best, begins prosaically but thoughtfully with a long sentence that runs to eight lines of verse. Sometimes I … Continue reading
In the beginning were the words
There are certain words and phrases that are so closely linked to a particular source that the association is never lost. Such words and phrases must be used cautiously, if … Continue reading
A poem by Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes was unusual in not writing about himself or, for that matter, about anyone else. Most poets are not like that. They want to share their feelings with us, … Continue reading
Frankenstein meets the Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison’s reputation depends on one thing, Invisible Man, a novel, the only one he wrote, published in 1952. Mary Shelley’s reputation depends on several things: being the wife of … Continue reading
The unwanted
Kamala Markandaya published her seventh novel, The Nowhere Man, in 1972. The huge success of her first novel, Nectar in a Sieve, published in 1954, had not been repeated and … Continue reading
Neil Rathmell - writer 