Considering how long Dylan Thomas was cogitating the essence of Under Milk Wood (from 1931, at 17-years-old), it is paradoxically jarring to know how accelerated and chaotic its near-completion became at the end of his ...
by Andy Stewart MacKay Thanks to her hugely successful detective fiction, and the many film and TV adaptations of her work, Agatha Christie has perhaps done more to define a particular kind of Englishness than ...
Penelope and her Suitors (1912) by John William Waterhouse The last ten years have brought particular focus to women’s engagement with the Classics. 2017 saw Emily Wilson publish her much-lauded translation of the Odyssey, and ...
By Andy Stewart MacKay “I have written a blasphemous book” said American novelist Herman Melville (1819-91) of his best-known work, Moby Dick, first published in 1851. Narrated by Ishmael, the biblically-resonant mariner afloat a “wilderness ...
For today’s audience, visualising Jane Austen is easy. In numerous recent TV and film dramatisations, the Regency era is communicated through a parade of empire line gowns, sedate formal dances and serene stately homes. So settled are ...
“In English none probably rival either the popularity, or the inclusiveness, or the general merits of the twelve books of twelve colours which we owe to Andrew Lang and to his wife.” — J. R. R. ...
One of the nine canonical lyric poets of Ancient Greece, Sappho remains something of a chimera to poets and classicists. No copies of the nine books of poetry she produced while living on the island ...
