The Cat Who Hissed at the World: Sue Catwoman (1955 – 2025)

Sue Catwoman (Sue Lucas), c.1977.Photographed by Ray Stevenson.Publicly circulated press image from the early London punk scene. Every generation breeds a handful of figures who seem to slip through the net of time - too wild for the archives, too vivid for mere memory. Sue Catwoman was one of those rare creatures: a woman who … Continue reading The Cat Who Hissed at the World: Sue Catwoman (1955 – 2025)

Time and the Old Women: Vanity with a Skeleton’s Smile

Francisco de Goya, Time and the Old Women, c. 1810–1820. Public domain. Francisco de Goya painted this nightmare somewhere between 1810 and 1820, during those black years when he’d gone deaf, half-mad, and wholly honest. The result is Time and the Old Women - a canvas in which social comedy collapses into a danse macabre. … Continue reading Time and the Old Women: Vanity with a Skeleton’s Smile

‘I Forgive’: A Widow at the Crossroads of Rage and Grace

There are phrases that ring through history like bells tolling in fog: ‘Et tu, Brute?’, ‘I have a dream,’ ‘Father, forgive them.’ Yesterday another such phrase was spoken - not in marble halls nor on the steps of Washington, but from a widow’s lips at her husband’s memorial service. Erika Kirk stood before the world, … Continue reading ‘I Forgive’: A Widow at the Crossroads of Rage and Grace

How Much Land Does a Man Need? – Tolstoy’s Six-Foot Sermon

Tolstoy was always the moralist disguised as a storyteller. He couldn’t so much as describe a hayfield without planting in it a parable, and How Much Land Does a Man Need? is among his most ruthless little lessons. At its heart, it’s an absurdly simple tale: a peasant named Pahom believes that with just a … Continue reading How Much Land Does a Man Need? – Tolstoy’s Six-Foot Sermon

Dreams That Wander Too Far: From Plato to The Further

Cinema, despite its thunderous claims to originality, is in truth a great necromancer. It raises the dead more often than it invents the living, and its spirits wear borrowed costumes even when paraded as new. When James Wan and Leigh Whannell conjured Insidious, they weren’t scribbling out some pristine mythology in a Hollywood boardroom but … Continue reading Dreams That Wander Too Far: From Plato to The Further