December Round Up

 

 

It's been a relatively quiet month on the journalism front, partly because of Christmas. I wrote about newspapers for The Telegraph, and parties, Christmas and Shakespeare for The Spectator.

 

November Round Up

 

 

 I wrote about hyphens for The Spectator, which you can read here.  Also, my review of Harper Lee's not very good short stories came out in Spectator World, here. 

 My book, The Arrow of Apollo, was republished by Wilton Square Books this month, and I've celebrated by sharing a couple of extracts. 

I've also written about re-reading and John Brownswerd (a Latin poet and teacher at the grammar school in Stratford upon Avon), over on my Substack. 

October Round Up

 

 My review of two books about A A Milne, E H Shepard and Winnie the Pooh, came out in Literary Review. 

I wrote an article for The Spectator about GQ's weird instructions for gentlemen. 

Philip Pullman's final novel about Lyra Belacqua, The Rose Field, was published, and my review appeared in The Telegraph.  

And I also wrote a light-hearted piece about the news that a family is looking for a tutor for £180,000 per annum for their one year old, also for The Telegraph.  

Over on Substack, I posted a video of my Ondine practice,  and I also wrote about aversion to technology; children's books and AI; and why we need English literature degrees. 

September Round Up

 

It's been a busy September, as autumn appears and a chill enters the air. 

I had a piece in the Spectator Schools supplement, here, on my boarding school memories, and another piece, about going to Lancing and Dorset House, which came out in the Lancing College magazine, Quad.

My Substack has been trundling along, with pieces on Ivy Compton-Burnett, Ovid's Tristia, the economics of writing books, John Lowin (an actor and contemporary of William Shakespeare), and the children's author Susan Price, whom I have recently discovered, having reviewed a reissue of her wonderful The Ghost Drum.

 

Summer Posts

 It's been a busy August, what with the "holidays", and trying to work alongside them... here are a few posts and articles that I've managed to produce over the past few weeks. 

Notes on Flatmates for the Spectator, about the new Pope's living arrangements.  

A piece about Letters of Introduction, also for The Spectator.  

And continuing my series about Shakespeare in Context, a piece about the Burbages for my Substack. 

 

Declining vocabulary in children's books

 I've written a piece for The Spectator about the declining quality of vocabulary in children's books. There wasn't space, unfortunately, to talk about the excellent writers who do stretch children these days, like Frances Hardinge, Marcus Sedgwick, Sally Gardner, F E Higgins et alia. 

The real story behind Barry Lyndon

Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon is a film I enjoy greatly: I also greatly enjoyed writing about it, and the real story behind it, for The Specator.