Thanks to Vaska for the Shakespeare insult link. Thanks to Caroline for the Mailer-Vidal story. At a Manhattan soiree attended by writers with egos the sizes of small planets, one Norman Mailer, displeased with a stinking review by Gore Vidal, … Read More »
Most if not all the major religions born of the neolithic revolutions – Hinduism, the Abrahamic faiths and the myths of Classical Greece – feature a Great Flood. “One hypothesis argues for a catastrophic deluge about 5600 BC from Mediterranean into Black Sea”, says … Read More »
[ezcol_2third][/ezcol_2third] [ezcol_1third_end]I don’t as a rule get involved in animal rights stuff. Too often the self righteousness is a turn-off, and there’s only so much you can do with one lifetime anyway. That said, there’s something here – the way … Read More »
… the Yorkshire Knitters have struck again. This hiker has to be out of his woolly mind to go up on Ilkley Moor without a hat. Is he not aware of the consequential chain such folly will trigger? Decades ago, David Hockney cited a … Read More »
‘Kid, next time I say “let’s go some place like Bolivia”, let’s go some place like Bolivia ..’
A villanelle has nineteen lines and just two rhyming sounds, in this case “ain” and “art”. Frank Scott’s Villanelle for Our Time was set to music by Leonard Cohen on one of his more unusual albums, Dear Heather. Years ago I heard Cohen tell BBC Front … Read More »
Today on BBC Radio 4, told from the alternating perspectives of family members where dad is laid low by clinical depression: a moving and creative exploration in prose monologue and rhyming verse. It even ends well. One of those rarities … Read More »
[ezcol_2third][/ezcol_2third] [ezcol_1third_end] “.. we had a job to do. I apologise to Sir Cliff if we were insensitive about the way we did it … our problem was an investigation compromised from the outset ..” [/ezcol_1third_end] Maybe Chief Constable David … Read More »
Nice one Lee – whoever you are!
Indonesia’s Attorney General’s Office announced today that in July, after Ramadan, sixteen unidentified death row inmates will be executed, ending a brief hiatus it bizarrely attributed to economic difficulties now resolved: We could not do it earlier because the government was trying … Read More »