There’s a moment, just after midday on the 21st of June, when the sun seems almost drunk with its own radiance. It leans heavily on the earth, like a tired old bishop full of wine and prophecy, and stares down the day as if daring it to get any longer. The shadows are weak. The … Continue reading The Longest Day: Fire, Folklore and the Turning Light
Category: My Words
Thoughts and memories-a-plenty!
A Referendum on Death
Foreword: A Note on Silence There are some things you are not supposed to say. That killing people, however nicely, is still killing people. That terminal illness does not grant others the right to pre-empt God. That what Parliament calls dignity might look suspiciously like abandonment in disguise. But here I am. And here, I … Continue reading A Referendum on Death
The Phantom in the Linen: On the Ubiquity of White Ladies, Grey Ladies, and Other Draped Nonsense
A couple of weeks ago, I found myself in Blanchland, Northumberland - a village so theatrically atmospheric it looks like it was designed by a heritage-obsessed monk with a fondness for mist. I was holed up in The Lord Crewe Arms, one of the North’s most famously haunted pubs - though frankly, the prices gave me … Continue reading The Phantom in the Linen: On the Ubiquity of White Ladies, Grey Ladies, and Other Draped Nonsense
Fingersmith: A Tale of Pickpockets, Pornographers, and Plot Twists So Sharp You’ll Need Stitches
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”— Jeremiah 17:9 First of all... On the Reluctance to Read the Modern …or, Why I Approach Contemporary Novels Like They Might Bite Me There’s a particular stiffness in my posture whenever someone recommends a “brilliant new novel.” A twitch behind the eyes. … Continue reading Fingersmith: A Tale of Pickpockets, Pornographers, and Plot Twists So Sharp You’ll Need Stitches
Conclave – or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Accept the End of Western Storytelling
I made the mistake -the blunder - of watching Conclave the other evening. A decision roughly on par with licking a battery to see if it’s working. It wasn’t entertainment. It was a two-hour slow-motion shrug, like watching a dying man cough into a linen napkin. Now, I’d been seduced, you see. Hoodwinked by the timing. A … Continue reading Conclave – or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Accept the End of Western Storytelling
Wording 