Just for fun.. Some decisions in life require gravitas. Signing treaties. Naming a child. Deciding whether or not to weep during The Snowman. And then - there’s the moment I find myself in far too often for someone who claims to be a rational adult - stood in my kitchen, dressing gown gaping, socks like … Continue reading Grape vs Cherry: A Culinary Conundrum of Biblical Proportions
Author: Robert
The Magus – A Hall of Mirrors for the Soul
There are some books you finish with a satisfied sigh, and others with a frown of confusion, and then there’s The Magus by by John Fowles - a novel I closed with the faint, haunting suspicion that I had been read far more thoroughly than I had read it. It didn’t so much end as evaporate, … Continue reading The Magus – A Hall of Mirrors for the Soul
What Remains After Love: A Reflection on The End of the Affair
There are books that don’t so much entertain as they haunt. They don’t ask for your approval, or even your sympathy - they simply step into the quietest room of your mind and sit there, uninvited, until you are forced to acknowledge them. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene is one of those … Continue reading What Remains After Love: A Reflection on The End of the Affair
The Ghosts That Britain Needed: A Reflection on Arthur Machen’s The Bowmen
I’ve always had a fondness for stories that creep in sideways. Not the grand, operatic ones that march on with banners flying, but the sort that slip in under the door, uninvited and half-mistaken for something real. Arthur Machen’s The Bowmen is precisely such a story - a modest tale of supernatural salvation that, with … Continue reading The Ghosts That Britain Needed: A Reflection on Arthur Machen’s The Bowmen
Stairway to Heaven and the Tunnel of Light: A Reflection on Bosch’s ‘Ascent of the Blessed’
Detail High time I talked about another piece of art. So… I’ve long maintained that heaven, if it exists, is probably not a harp-saturated cloudbank filled with recycled hymn lyrics and relatives you were secretly relieved had passed on. But then I stumbled - quite willingly - into Ascent of the Blessed, one of Bosch’s … Continue reading Stairway to Heaven and the Tunnel of Light: A Reflection on Bosch’s ‘Ascent of the Blessed’