“Great Pan is not dead, but sleeping; and the reed shall sound again at the hour of need.” - Adapted from Plutarch It’s a curious feature of English children’s literature that its most enchanting works are often its most subversive. Carroll slipped logic puzzles and ontological riddles into Alice; Tolkien smuggled Catholic theology into hobbit … Continue reading The Forgotten Divinity: On The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Category: My Words
Thoughts and memories-a-plenty!
The Kiss of Judee Sill: A Hymn to Love and Death
Some songs drift like smoke and some songs weigh like stone. Judee Sill’s The Kiss is the latter: not a melody you whistle while waiting for a bus, but a requiem whispered in the confessional, heavy with sorrow, radiant with a kind of bruised grace. Judee Sill herself was a paradox incarnate. Born in 1944, … Continue reading The Kiss of Judee Sill: A Hymn to Love and Death
The Ship of Theseus: A Nation Adrift on Rotten Planks
Plutarch’s riddle is older than our language but no less urgent for its age. If every plank of Theseus’ ship were replaced, was it still the same vessel? The Athenians insisted that it was - because their pride needed it to be so. Hobbes, less sentimental, pressed the matter: what if the discarded planks were … Continue reading The Ship of Theseus: A Nation Adrift on Rotten Planks
The Jangle of Bells and the Old Dame of Music Halls
There’s nothing quite so peculiarly English as Morris dancing. Only in this island kingdom could the populace collectively decide that the best way to summon spring, frighten away demons, and cheer up the neighbours was to strap bells to one’s shins, wave hankies in the air, and smack one another with sticks. It’s both sublime … Continue reading The Jangle of Bells and the Old Dame of Music Halls
The Wooden Shadow: Laura Purcell’s Silent Companions and the Gothic of Hollow Lives
Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions - a book which proves, if nothing else, that the Victorians couldn’t leave well enough alone. If it wasn’t séances or table-tipping, it was cardboard aristocrats painted to look like Aunt Mildred, propped up in drawing rooms like the world’s most unnerving IKEA mannequins. History assures us they were ‘decorative,’ … Continue reading The Wooden Shadow: Laura Purcell’s Silent Companions and the Gothic of Hollow Lives
Wording 