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Month: May 2024
Book of the Week: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is the classic beauty and the beast tale written by Victor Hugo, the author of that other enduring tale of passion and tragedy, Les Miserables. Hugo, (1802 -1885) was a prolific novelist poet, playwright and politician. He became one of the masters of French romanticism, a literary movement that placed emphasis… Read More
Dylan Thomas, Taylor Swift, and ‘Tortured Poets’
On International Dylan Thomas Day, and as Taylor Swift name-checks Dylan Thomas on her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, Sally Minogue looks at Thomas’s cultural power and the long-standing relationship between poetry and song. ‘Swifties’ (my own fifteen-year-old great-niece numbered amongst them) adore Taylor Swift. It’s no ordinary liking for your average pop star;… Read More
Book of the Week: Sense and Sensibility
Sense and Sensibility was Jane Austen’s first published but second written novel. Denis Hanrahan Wells takes up the story. She initially began writing it at the age of nineteen under the title ‘Elinor and Marianne’ as an epistolary novel, a form which was very popular at this time. She had begun the novel shortly after… Read More