A Story from the Settle Flowerpot Festival I’ve spent a fair bit of time in the Yorkshire Dales this year so far, so, I’ve crafted a little story inspired by Settle’s penchant for flamboyant flower pots. Enjoy. In the crook of an old dry-stone wall, on the edge of Settle’s bustling village square, there lived … Continue reading The Tale of the Broken Flower Pot
Category: Literature
Grumbling My Way into the 21st Century: Reading Brat
Cover image © Gabriel Smith / Scribner UK (or Penguin Press) I’ll admit it: modern fiction and I don’t exactly see eye to eye. In fact, we’ve been glaring at each other across the room for years now, occasionally muttering under our breaths about how the other one’s gone downhill since the ‘90s. My own … Continue reading Grumbling My Way into the 21st Century: Reading Brat
Dialectics, or How Karl Marx Ruined My Shandy
There are few things more dangerous to a peaceful evening than a Marxist in full flow. One minute you’re happily contemplating the head on your shandy, the next you’re being lectured about 'historical inevitability' by someone who’s never held a job long enough to be sacked. The conversation usually begins with the inevitable: “Dialectics is … Continue reading Dialectics, or How Karl Marx Ruined My Shandy
On the Philosophical Inch: Rabelais, Moderation, and the Peculiar Poetry of Bodily Measurement
It’s a curious thing, the way serious literature can sit happily alongside lavatorial humour. In Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais - physician, monk, and unabashed chronicler of the digestive tract - offers us not only giants, feasts, and bawdy theology, but also the sort of detail one might overhear in a backroom surgery over a … Continue reading On the Philosophical Inch: Rabelais, Moderation, and the Peculiar Poetry of Bodily Measurement
Invisible, My Eye – Reflections on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
When Ralph Ellison published Invisible Man in 1952, America was still congratulating itself on having beaten the Nazis and saved democracy. Yet here was a novel calmly pointing out that a good chunk of its own citizens were treated as if they didn’t exist - or rather, as if they existed only when they could … Continue reading Invisible, My Eye – Reflections on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
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