Here, from the Lyttelton Times, a New Zealand newspaper of 1911, is yet another proof of the strange side-effects of Rudyard Kipling’s immense celebrity ..read more

After I retired as a teacher, I applied to Oxford Brookes to research a Ph.D. on the prose of the Great War. They were welcoming, and I had a good and productive time there. (I was very fortunate in having Jane Potter, who had written brilliantly on Great War fiction, as one of my supervisors.) It is gloomy reading, therefore, to learn that there are going to be major cuts in the English Department there, as well as History, Film, Anthropology, Publishing and Architecture. The Music and Mathematics departments will be closed completely. There are good people in the English Department at Brooke ..read more

Even more off-topic than usual, but I thought I’d share here the fact that I’ve co-authored an article that is printed in the new edition of the Byron Journal. Here’s how it happened: My friend Mary Lister has inherited a collection of letters and autographs from her ancestor, Theresa, Lady Lister, who was a friend and associate of Mary Berry, the Regency bluestocking and hostess, who in turn had been a great friend of Horace Walpole. The collection includes letters and items addresed to each of these, plus many extras – one of which is a letter from Byron to his publisher, John Murray. It is ..read more

I’m puzzled. Vintage Uk have apparently prefaced their edition of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse with this warning: ‘This book was published in 1927 and reflects the attitudes of its time. The publisher’s decision to present it as it was originally published is not intended as an endorsement of cultural representations or language contained herein.’ I’m racking my brains to think of what in Woolf’s novel could possibly offend even the most sensitive of offence-hungry modern readers. Any ideas? It’s a while since I read To the Lighthouse, but I can’t recall anything in the way of prejudic ..read more

From the Tewkesbury Register, and Agricultural Gazette, 14 Sep 1918 A true story, or a bit of folklore ..read more

I’ve greatly enjoyed reading Matthew Hollis’s The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem, even though it tells a story that has been told before – most notably in Robert Crawford’s very good biography, Young Eliot, which I read not so long ago. Well, good stories stand re-telling. What I appreciated most about Hollis’s book was that he tells Ezra Pound’s story in tandem with Eliot’s. While Eliot was working through his personal crises to produce his greatest poem, Pound was facing a professional crisis, with his Propertius mocked and literary London turning its back on him. After this I understood ..read more

Simon Keable-Elliott is the grandson of the novelist Robert Keable, and is understandably interested in his grandfather’s life and work – and especially in Simon called Peter, the book that caused outrage in Britain when published in 1921. It is the story of an Anglican clergyman who goes to war as a chaplain, but starts to lose his faith, partly because the soldiers are not interested in his religious message. He also becomes fascinated by the ‘painted ladies’ who cluster near the soldiers’ bases. Then he meets Julie, a beautiful and very obliging nurse, and he discovers the meaning of life ..read more

Having become interested in the war poems of George Willis, I have now acquired a copy of his Any Soldier to his Son. I have also taken a look at his The Philosophy of Speech at the Internet Archive. The poetry book is a small but nicely made volume (publisher George Allen and Unwin), with a neat cover decoration attributed to C.R.W. Nevinson. There are six poems more or less in the style of ‘Any Soldier to his Son’, plus eleven others in a more conventional mode. The soldier poem I like best is ‘Employment base depot, 1917’, about the ragtag group of soldiers who for physical or psychologica ..read more

I learned to wash in shell-holes, and to shave myself in tea, While the fragments of a mirror did a balance on my knee. I learned to dodge the whizz-bangs and the flying lumps of lead, And to keep a foot of earth between the snipers and my head. I learned to keep my haversack well-filled with buckshee food, To take my army issue and to pinch what else I could. I learned to cook machonochie with candle-ends and string, With four-by-two and sardine-oil, and any old darned thing. I learned to use my bayonet according as you please, For a bread-kinife or a chopper, or a prong for toasting cheese ..read more

The Sheffield Hallam University Popular Fiction Reading Group (1900-1950) has now reached its tenth birthday, and celebrations are planned. There will be an event at the University on July 19th (of which more later), and there will be a publication. The Good, the Bad and the Extraordinary is a collection of reviews by members of the group, giving an idea of the wide range of books we discuss at our monthly meetings. The reviews are arranged in chronological order, from Anne of Green Gables, first published in 1908, through to Torment for Trixie by Hank Janson, from 1950. Popular fiction is a ..read more