BLOG POSTS

Sally Minogue continues her ‘Empire’ series, looking at Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim and touching on some of his poetry. Rudyard Kipling has elements in common with my previous subject, Joseph Conrad, in spite of appearances to the contrary. ‘Rudyard’ was Kipling’s second given name (his first was Joseph), derived from Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire where… Read More

Dr Stephen Carver looks at the most famous vampire of them all. When Bram Stoker died after a series of strokes on April 20, 1912, his obituary in The Times made only a single and cursory reference to Dracula noting that ‘He was the master of a particularly lurid and creepy kind of fiction’. The… Read More

‘And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth’. As we all recalibrate our understanding of Empire, Sally Minogue reconsiders Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, in the first of a short series of blogs on literature and colonialism.  A few months ago, in the balmy Spring weather, I walked with friends… Read More

David Stuart Davies looks at one of Joseph Conrad’s later political novels.. The Secret Agent is a bleak novel, the gloom of which is alleviated by the subtle thread of humour which is woven into the story. The dark and often depressing mood of the book is said to have been influenced by Charles Dickens’… Read More

 ‘The Idiot’ was the third of Dostevesky’s classic novels. David Stuart Davies takes up the story. ‘The Idiot anticipates not just the concerns of twentieth century existentialist thought but heralds our modern age in general.’ Agnes Cardinal The Idiot (1869 ) is one of a trio of great Russian novels penned by Fyodor Dostoevsky which… Read More

David Stuart Davies looks at the major work by one of the greatest Russian authors. ‘We sit in the mud, my friend, and reach for the stars.’ Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) was a novelist poet and playwright, and one of the greatest figures of Russian literature. His novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as… Read More

David Stuart Davies looks at a classic tale of American history. ‘The Last of the Mohicans’. American author James Fenimore Cooper (1789 – 1851) penned five novels about frontier life across north-eastern America in the eighteenth century. Each novel features the rather oddly named character Natty Bumppo, a frontier scout known to European-American settlers as… Read More

Ben Hur. David Stuart Davies looks at the book behind the famous film. While the novel, Ben Hur: A Tale of Christ, has been called ‘the most influential Christian book of the nineteenth century’, it is now mainly remembered by modern readers because of the celebrated 1959 movie starring Charlton Heston. However, by contrast, the author,… Read More

David Stuart Davies looks at a classic children’s story set in the time of the English Civil War. Frederick Marryat (1792 – 1848) wrote novels for both adults and children. He ran away to sea as a young boy and had a notable naval career, distinguishing himself by a number of heroic deeds and inventing… Read More