It can be very easy to stay in your own corner of the world, especially after building a life there …
On going about your own life when a loved one is suffering: W. H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts”
After I spent some time memorising Tennyson’s “Ulysses”, I decided to move on to learning W. H. …
Homer as a “surprisingly accurate observer of anatomy”: The Iliad, injury, and mortality rates
No one can hurry me down to Hades before my time, but if a man's hour is come, be he brave or be he …
Nick Cave’s chosen “sad poem of loss”: “The Widower in the Country” by Les Murray
Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2012.Image credit Sally May Mills. I was very saddened to …
Allen Ginsberg on never working again (and living a “literary and quiet city-hermit existence” instead)
Carl Solomon, Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs at the Gotham Book Mart …
‘Feast on your life’: Tom Hiddleston on Derek Walcott’s “Love After Love” for accepting ourselves
I read it to my dearest friends after dinner once, and to my family at Christmas, and they started …