Blake in Lambeth
No.13 Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, was the residence of William Blake and his wife Catherine during the most creative and productive period of his life…
Four Unforgettable Women – Four Forgotten Novels
Four forgotten novels: To Walk the Night (William Sloane); The Well Beloved (Thomas Hardy); L’Ève Future (Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam); L’Atlantide (Pierre Benoit). Four not-so-forgotten women.
Femmes Fatales and Gothic Monsters • Male authors’ bonkers ideas about women, and some not so bonkers…
Is the Devil at the Centre of The Universe? Dante’s Divina Commedia
Many have sought to enter the world of Dante’s Divine Comedy, but how many really know the work?
And, of those, how many have truly grasped the essential structure of Dante’s cosmos?
Supernatural Vengeance in Hamlet and Macbeth
Part of the Oxford Shakespeare Jubilee in April 2016.
The Centre and the Circle: Dante’s Vita nuova
The Vita nuova is a journey to the centre of Dante’s own emotional life.
In his first book, Dante tries to come to terms with his experience of love – the fulminating first encounter with Beatrice when he was nine years old and she eight; their second meeting nine years later, when both were on the threshold of marriage; and the fateful denial of her greeting when word had reached Beatrice’s ears that Dante was addressing poems and compliments to another lady.
Three Angles on Greece
Three novelists attempt to show us what Modern Greece really is.
Translating Pirandello: Babble, Drivel and Scribble
Luigi Pirandello is probably Italy’s most renowned playwright. Yet in almost 100 years, few translations into English have done justice to his work.
Simon, whose PhD thesis specialized in Italian drama of the period, explains why…
Utopia, Dystopia and Mr Smith
Erewhon (Samuel Butler) • Looking Backward (Edward Bellamy) • 1984 (George Orwell) • Island (Aldous Huxley)
Is utopia confined to fiction, and dystopia the reality we should expect?