John Clare
‘If you steal this book I’ll beat your brains out’
Curses on the book thief from Latin and Old English sources range from the venomous to the sadistic to the mind-twistingly gruesome
The many passions of Ronald Blythe
Some he kept hidden, such as his affairs with soldiers in the second world war, but his love of nature, literature, naked sunbathing and moonlit bicycling are all well-attested
A walled garden in Suffolk yields up its secrets
When Olivia Laing began restoring the former property of a garden designer, she had no idea of the beauty that lay hidden by rampant weeds
What convinces Jeremy Corbyn that ‘there is a poet in all of us’?
‘Nobody should ever be afraid of sharing their poetry’, he says, in an anthology co-edited with Len McCluskey. But, judging by his own offering, afraid is what we should be
Nonny nonny no
As a writer who obsesses over the right title to grab a target audience, seeing a book subtitled ‘Song Collectors…
Pure and endless light
There has been extraordinarily little bright sunlight in the far northwest corner of Britain over the past year. Damp, drizzling…
Low life
I’m such a constitutional lightweight lately that I’ve started looking on the website What’s On in South Devon for things…
The eternal beauty of John Clare
This has been a terrible year for horseflies. It’s bad enough if you’re human: often by the time you swat…
