BLOG POSTS
Category: News
‘Miss Austen’ – the BBC drama reviewed
‘She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow, I had not a thought concealed from her, and it is as if I had lost a part of myself’ (Cassandra Austen’s words about her sister Jane after Jane’s death) Miss 2025 marks the 250th anniversary year of… Read More
Woman of Stone
M.R. James, Mark Gatiss, and the Evolution of the BBC’s Ghost Stories for Christmas Woman of Stone ‘The ghost is innately conservative,’ Professor Clive Bloom once wrote, in an uncompromising essay on M.R. James. A bold claim in gothic theory, it makes perfect sense when you think about it. ‘Ghosts tell us of stability and… Read More
‘He do the Police in different voices’
As Charles Dickens’ last complete novel, Our Mutual Friend, is adapted for BBC Radio 4, Sally Minogue looks at the novel’s relationship to his world and to ours. I’ve just spent a few days in London, where this blog was very much on my mind. In Our Mutual Friend (1865), as often in Dickens’ novels,… Read More
David Stuart Davies (1946-2024)
Regular readers of our blog will be sad to hear that our old friend David Stuart Davies passed away in August. The association with Wordsworth of David and his wife Kathryn dates back to the late 1990s, the days of the £1 classic paperback, when Kathryn contributed an introduction to our edition of Agnes Grey, and David… Read More
Lord Byron
2024 marks the 200th anniversary of poet Lord Byron’s death. Sally Minogue looks at his writing and his life, and the age-old question as to whether we can separate the two. It’s difficult to write about George Gordon, Lord Byron, without referring to the soubriquet ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’, so let’s get that… 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