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“It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles” Many of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s most beloved poems are set on the water. In Crossing the Bar, the eighty-year-old poet, writing as he passed over the Solent to the Isle of Wight, hopes that his own… Read More

In the summer of 1960, American International Pictures released a little gothic number called The Fall of the House of Usher based on the strange and phantasmagoric short story of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in 1839. AIP was a low-budget, independent outfit that banged out cheap… Read More

‘Whatever you do, sir, lock the door early on All Saints’ Eve, and make the blessed cross-sign over the doorstep and on the windows.’ Halloween season, in common with Christmas, is the time of year many an avid reader will reach for a ghostly tale. Whilst sitting comfortably by the fireside hopefully the story will… Read More

David Ellis finds fault with ‘The Swan of Avon’ Shakespeare’s Titles As anyone who has ever put pen to paper will know, finding titles for what you have written can be difficult.  Reading a book on Shakespeare’s treatment of old age I was struck recently by the felicity of its title.  The author had taken… Read More

David Stuart Davies looks at Charles Dickens’s last, unfinished, novel The real mystery of Edwin Drood concerns his sudden disappearance, which raises the question of whether he is dead or alive, for no body is discovered. If dead, has he been murdered and if so, by whom? Sadly, Charles Dickens died before he was able… Read More

Denise Hanrahan-Wells looks at Anne of Avonlea, the sequel to Anne of Green Gables. ‘Oh, will I ever learn to stop and reflect a little before doing reckless things? Mrs Lynde always told me I would do something dreadful someday, and now I’ve done it.’ Fans of the eponymous orphan Anne Shirley will have probably… Read More

Like the later Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Rainbow was initially banned for obscenity on its publication in 1915, but for only a mere eleven years. Mia Rocquemore revisits this complex novel. D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow contains all the features of a Victorian story that so appeal to the critical eye of modern literature undergraduates: there… Read More

Stefania Ciocia finds new harmonies in The Hours and Mrs Dalloway “In a play, if more than one person speaks at the same time, it’s just noise. No one can understand a word. But with music, with music you can have twenty individuals all talking at once, and it’s not noise – it’s a perfect… Read More

As new biographies revisit George Orwell’s standing and attitudes, Sally Minogue considers Orwell and Women George Orwell’s reputation both as man and as writer has been placed under re-examination of late. New biographies of both him and of his first wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy have re-evaluated his standing, and I have just finished listening to this… Read More