Imagine a tipsy room of eminent painters, poets, and intellectuals, laughing as they wait for a play to begin. Virginia Woolf sits alongside E.M. Forster; T.S. Eliot may pop in. Clive Bell’s booming laughter can be heard above the chatter; Woolf will later describe the atmosphere as ‘unbuttoned’. In 1930s London, the Bloomsbury Group often […]
Very few Cambridge University English professors have been tried at the Magistrates’ Court, but Jason Scott-Warren is an exception. After his actions at a 2019 Extinction Rebellion protest were judged unreasonable, he was found guilty of an offence under Section 14 of the Public Order Act and fined over £1000. Although long conscious of the […]
On the 15th of February 1967, an obituary notice for the Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad ran in Tehran’s newspapers. She had died the day before, flung out of the window of her car while swerving to avoid an oncoming school bus. She was only 32 years old. Since then, her quasi-autobiographical, tragically prophetic, posthumously published […]
My typically lecture-jammed week has become a wasteland. All of my English Literature lectures and tutorials are cancelled in support of the UCU industrial action, which is demanding improved pensions, stable job security, manageable workloads, and the closing of pay gaps. With a 25 per cent fall in higher education salaries against inflation since 2009, […]
Does writing a memoir commit the author to a non-fiction account? Any author must strike a balance between objectivity and idiosyncratic perception of events. Timelines are compressed, emotions factored in, and reputations preserved. But will Boris Johnson’s upcoming memoir possess any credibility at all? Pursued by a track record of Partygate, cronyism, and misuse of […]