Close Reading
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She’s White: Skin in Antony and Cleopatra
Readers sometimes forget that the modern obsession with tanning is relatively recent.
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First 100 Words: The Remains of the Day
in 100 WordsSometimes the more people speak, the less they actually say. What aren’t we being told here, and why not?
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09.09 Leo Tolstoy
We don’t earn our faces. We don’t choose our symmetry, our hair, our height, our bone structure. Yet somehow we can end up treating the result as though it tells us something about character.
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08.09 Siegfried Sassoon
Sassoon’s anger is contemptuous, whereas Owen’s more often feels bewildered. It gives Sassoon more satirical ‘bite’.
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07.09 Michelle Paver
Paver is brilliant at creating a sense of place – and then making you slightly afraid of it.
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Red Right Hand: Hands in Macbeth
Macbeth? The play of blood. And black. And birds, too. But today, let’s talk about hands.
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First 100 Words: The Bloody Chamber
in 100 WordsI hear sirens, in both senses of the word … I think he’s expecting a girl. What he’s going to meet? A woman.
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From the Archives: 03.09.2018
Reading is an ongoing conversation between the writer and the reader.
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02.09 JRR Tolkien
Middle-earth is a dark and dangerous place. So why do we all want to live there?
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01.09 WW Jacobs
Tell me about a story I shouldn’t read just before switching off the light. WW Jacobs is responsible for one of mine …