Gustave Doré, Inferno, Canto XIII: The Forest of Suicides, 1866.Wood engraving for Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy (public domain image). When I first looked at Doré’s Forest of Suicides, I thought of winter trees after a storm - those half-living skeletons that creak when the wind passes through, as if remembering they were once alive. … Continue reading The Forest That Feels: On Doré’s Inferno and the Suicide of the Soul
Tag: history
They All Love Jack: The Gospel According to the Gutters
I’ve long suspected that the Ripper mystery isn’t so much about one man’s madness as it’s about a whole empire’s mask slipping. You can smell the hypocrisy before you even open Bruce Robinson’s They All Love Jack. It’s the stench of gaslight and gin, of sanctimonious gentlemen who polished their Masonic jewels while the poor … Continue reading They All Love Jack: The Gospel According to the Gutters
No Exit – Hell, Mirrors, and the Modern Soul
No Exit is Sartre’s vision of the afterlife and contains no fire, no pitchforks, and no sulphuric pits; it is, instead, a perfectly reasonable room - which is precisely what makes it horrifying. He replaces Dante’s inferno with a waiting room furnished by IKEA and irony. This isn’t the Hell of theology but of psychology … Continue reading No Exit – Hell, Mirrors, and the Modern Soul
The Defaced Face of Faith: On the Canterbury Graffiti Scandal
There are moments in the long and weary life of a civilisation when one can hear not so much the bells of its cathedrals as the creak of its conscience. This week, Canterbury Cathedral - England’s oldest mother-church, cradle of Augustine, beacon of Becket, and bruised survivor of the Reformation - has been newly baptised … Continue reading The Defaced Face of Faith: On the Canterbury Graffiti Scandal
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)
Wording 