Fran Lock on Ulysses
Proteus stilla maris , stella maris . drop of the sea, star of the sea, beaming out the necrotised telemetry of holiness, holiness,...
top of page
ONE HAND CLAPPING
Fran Lock on The Lament for Art O'Leary
Earlier this year – the 4th of May to be exact – the famous Irish lament, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire or The Lament for Art O'Leary , ...
Paul Hostovsky on the music of sign language
The Music of Sign Language It may sound oxymoronic, but there is music in sign language. Even if you don't understand a word of it, you...
John Eccleston: How Donna Tartt almost changed my life
I've been writing since I was a teenager. I've always thought of myself as a writer. But I'm fifty-eight this year and have had nothing...
Bruce Bromley: Unschooling
Nearly halfway to fourteen and I've slept with more men than my parents Pat and Steve would ever care to count. I know them by the names...
Jo Balmer reviews "Euripides: The Trojan Women"
Euripides: The Trojan Woman: A Comic by Rosanna Bruno, text by Anne Carson. Bloodaxe Books, 80pp. £10.99 "I always thought of them more...
Jane Feaver on Tracey Emin
Every Part of Me Kept Loving You, 2018 © Tracey Emin Stupidly good: Satan, Tracey Emin and me Preamble In Paradise Lost, Book IX, Satan,...
Yuval Noah Harari on Facebook
Five years ago, Yuval Noah Harari agreed to let us publish this article in our second print edition. For various reasons, we never...
Elaine Axten: Diagnosis
The following is an edited extract from Different Day, a book that we hope will be published soon. Chapter One "When the dog dies", I...
Fran Lock: Missing You
It is the 20th of December 2020. We are told we cannot travel, and I panic. We all do, although our panic manifests in different ways. My...
Elena Ferrante: an extract
Writing Secretly Letter to Goffredo Fofi Dear Fofi, I'm sorry to have to tell you that I don't know how to give concise answers to the...
Brandon Robshaw: English Usage #28
Bilabial Plosives, etc. I've been musing about bilabial plosives recently, as one does. A plosive is a sound made by releasing pent-up...
Brandon Robshaw: English Usage #27
How do you pronounce "lingerie"? Not longeré. This is of course a very common mistake but I still can't get used to it. In French the...
Brandon Robshaw: English Usage #26
A Potato in my Sock This morning I was pulling on my socks and I saw that one sock had a hole in the heel. "A potato", I thought. "I've...
Brandon Robshaw: English Usage #24
Skiving off I don't feel like doing any work today. I feel like skiving. Skiving off. Being a skiver. I always associate the word "skive"...
Brandon Robshaw: English Usage #23
Ass or arse? Has anyone else noticed that our good old English word arse is being usurped, at least in writing, by the US alternative...
Bruce Bromley: an essay
Go Farther Well, it’s the story of the 1980s. I’m very aware that younger generations of kids are growing up not knowing anything about...
Brandon Robshaw: English Usage #22
The demise of "which" I received a letter from my optician which stated: "It is very important for patients over forty-five to have...
Hilary Mantel: an essay
He Roared Danton: The Gentle Giant of Terror by David Lawday. Cape, 294 pp., £20, July 2009, 978 0 224 07989 1 "Give me a place to...
Lilian Pizzichini: Project Perm
A thousand miles to the east of Moscow is the last city in Europe. To be precise, the fourth largest city in Russia, situated along the...
Brandon Robshaw: English Usage #21
Worldie I might give the impression here sometimes that all I do is complain about language usage when it's not what I'm used to; that I...
Alice Willits: an essay
A Pink Pathway Dianthus carthusianorum Her shriek split through the tanker drone along the Thames near Tilbury. My mother had spotted...
Brandon Robshaw: English Usage #19
Has anyone else noticed that the traditional expression in the light of has dropped its definite article over the last few years, and now...
Bruce Bromley: an essay
Thing, Idea, Virus: Little Words That’s the job of consciousness, to turn Now into Always, to mistake what is for what was meant to be....
bottom of page