Yearly archives: 2016



I have long argued that English Literature ends in about 1400AD. I was fascinated to discover, in Andrew Marr’s useful TV programme on Fantasy, that J.R.R.Tolkien and C.S.Lewis believed that English Literature shouldn’t be taught beyond 1400, so that you could concentrate on the important stuff (there are some later […]

Perspective


The new Ireland: new moral state? Saturday 22 October, 12.00 – 13.00 , Pit Theatre  In May 2015, Ireland voted by an overwhelming majority to legalise same-sex marriage, becoming the first country in the world to do so by popular vote. This decision, hailed as a social revolution, marks an […]

The new Ireland: new moral state?



Death and the meaning of life Sunday 23 October, 16.00 – 17.15 , Cinema 3  ‘Not to be here, not to be anywhere, and soon.’ Philip Larkin’s words help us focus on the great existential question: how should we live our lives when we are permanently under the shadow of […]

Death at the Battle of Ideas







I have added a whole new section to the website (under Non-fiction) devoted to the works of Mervyn Peake – an obsession about which I shall be saying more and more as time passes. Immediately, it is an opportunity to re-publish an article I wrote in 1999 for The Mervyn […]

Mervyn Peake