Walter Scott's Tales of a Scottish Grandfather takes as a paratext the idea that he is explaining Scottish history to his grandson. In fact the degree to which Scott remembers this varies - he certainly slips in the odd reference to 'your grandfather' or 'your grandfather's grandfather', but for the majority of the time it is clear that …
A Brief Introduction to Alexander Herzen
I have been reading over the past few months Alexander Herzen's My Past and Thoughts - or, more accurately, an abridgement of My Past and Thoughts. It is a book about which I could, and probably will, write at inordinate length. Herzen is a companion for life. But I wanted to start by attempting to explain why I …
Crabbe – Tale 10: The Lover’s Journey
The Lover's Journey, in contrast to the three Tales which preceded it, is most definitely not part of any group in terms of its subject or theme. It is a poem which could very easily be taken out of the context of The Tales. It is also in many ways a sunny, happy poem and thus …
October Miscellany (2009)
Continuing with Caryl Churchill I reached Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1977). I thought from the title that this was likely to be among my favourite of Churchill's plays and so it proved. Using her ensemble techniques she covers the radicalization, and then the confrontation with and suppression of the radicals, which occurred during the course of …
Berlin on Turgenev
In 1970 Isaiah Berlin delivered the Romanes Lecture in Oxford under the title 'Fathers and Children - Turgenev and the Liberal Predicament' ; the text is contained in the 1975 Penguin edition of Fathers and Sons. It is deeply fascinating not only for the insights which it gives into Turgenev, a man whom Berlin found …
October Movies
Continuing my Godard viewing I come to his second film Le Petit Soldat (1960 but not released until 1963) starring Michel Subor and Anna Karina. The reason for the three-year delay between the making and release of the film was due to the fact that the French Government banned it because of its sensitive political content. Subor plays …
Trollope – Short Stories – City and Country
On the renamed Trollope 19thC Studies list (see right for link) we have embarked on a year long project of reading the complete Short Stories. We have read some 13 stories so far and the main - and very obvious - conclusions I would draw are... That the quality of the stories varies wildly; some are little …
Continue reading Trollope – Short Stories – City and Country
September Miscellany
There is not that much for me to write about this month as much of it was spent in the grip of Depression (although I manage to find a topic!) ; this does however give a chance for a brief discussion of some topics which rarely get aired, first among them video games, my favourite …
Very Very Late August Miscellany
I have not written about the big D., my mood or what has been happening in my life for some months now. I was just preparing to do so at the very end of August and was ready to comment on how excellent July and August had been - the best August since my 'mood records' began …
Gogol’s Dead Souls
As a result of reading Alexander Herzen's brilliant My Past and My Thoughts (about which I am still trying to start writing) I have embarked on a course of 19thC Russian literature to try and, very slowly, enlighten my dismal ignorance in this area. My first book was Nikolay Gogol's novel Dead Souls. Due to …
Moving Toyshop 