Grief experts say grief has a shape; they have charted its pattern. First there is shock, then denial, then bargaining (for more time), then guilt, anger, depression, and finally acceptance. The experts disagree over the number and order of the stages but they all agree there is a pattern. The experts could probably track the … More Elegies by Douglas Dunn
I bet you’ll have come across one at some stage when you were growing up: the kid in the class who had no friends and was always alone. The kid who other kids avoided because they just weren’t right, somehow. The kid who even adults didn’t like, never asking why we didn’t invite them to … More The Children of Dynmouth by William Trevor
At the time of writing, Prime Minister May is in France to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the D-Day landings. By the end of the week she will have resigned, after a relatively short premiership dominated by Brexit. At the D day ceremony a 90-something veteran tells a BBC reporter that it took so much … More Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Mosley
Mona Lisa Sunflowers The Scream Even if you know nothing much about art (like me) and you hear the name Leonardo de Vinci, Van Gogh, and Munch, then I bet you’ll immediately think of the paintings just listed. If you think a bit longer and harder, of course, you might come up with some others, … More A Life of Picasso Volume 1: 1881 – 1906 by John Richardson
St Andrew’s Gardens is a Grade II listed art deco building in Liverpool city centre. Now used for student accommodation, it was built in the 1930s as a council tenement block, and because of its distinctive circular shape became known locally as the “Bullring”. In the 1980s it was still in council ownership but badly … More Swing Hammer Swing! by Jeff Torrington
“A war between two people is not all that different from a war between two countries.” My paternal grandfather, William Smith, was killed in action in World War I. Not long afterwards his wife died of ‘grief’ (malnutrition and exhaustion, in my mother’s view) and their five children were put into homes run by Dr … More Theory of War by Joan Brady
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king- dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstacy! Then off, off forth on swing, As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a … More Under the Eye of the Clock by Christopher Nolan
When I was a child I remember my mum having a blue and white plate. It was in the style of Chinese willow pattern but the stamp on the back said ‘made in Japan’, and depicted a kimono clad figure of indeterminate sex standing on an arched bridge over a softly flowing river, dwarfed by … More An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
Have you heard of The Satanic Verses? Probably, yes, if only because of the furore following its publication: accusations of blasphemy and a fatwa against the author, Salman Rushdie. And The Comforts of Madness? I’d guess not; at the specialist second-hand bookshop where I found my copy, the staff recognised neither the book nor the … More The Comforts of Madness by Paul Sayer
Anyone remember Frankie Goes to Hollywood? Their first single, Relax, banned by the BBC, went on to make number one in the UK singles charts – nothing like a bit of controversy to stir up public interest! Their second single also topped the charts, as did their third. But it’s the fourth single, Welcome to … More Coleridge: Early Visions by Richard Holmes
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