Unreal City: The London of The Lonely Londoners

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This is not really a book review, although I did re-read, and enjoy The Lonely Londoners as part of the #1956club. It is rather an excuse to pull out some quotations, share some research and images, and post a quite remarkable documentary. Along the way my journey took me deep into the North Kensington of … Read more

Hopeful Signs

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I am always a bit astonished when I see tRump signs at people’s houses. And I ask myself: “Who are these people? What on earth can they be thinking?” There’s three on our route to our usual walk  – not just signs of course, but mega flags trumpeting the household fascist tendencies, racism, and misogyny … Read more

From The Turn of the Screw to Strangers on a Train #SixDegrees

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As a starting point for a chain of connections #sixdegrees The Turn of the Screw has everything. Is it a mystery story or a study in overwrought and morbid psychology? There’s gothic horror, ghosts and governesses. Jane Eyre and Murdoch’s The Unicorn come to mind. It starts on Christmas Eve; there are strange children, one … Read more

The Book Chain: Six Degrees and the Invention of Sex

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Long before the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, bookish teens had Iris Murdoch. As the poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) explained in Annus Mirabilis, sex was invented in 1963      Sexual intercourse began    In nineteen sixty-three    (which was rather late for me) –    Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban  … Read more

Anarchy in New York: The Mayhem Continues

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As we know the tRump misadministration has – for reasons of its own – declared New York City to be a jurisdiction of anarchy, violence and property destruction. This is Part Two. Part One is here. The Justice Department declared New York City A place of Anarchy, violence and Property losses. Live from New York … Read more

Anarchy in New York City

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The US Department of ‘Justice’ declared this week that New York City — along with Portland and Seattle — to be a “jurisdiction permitting violence and destruction property.”  Allegedly our state and local government are permitting anarchy, violence, and destruction So of course I had to take a look. So far, this is what I … Read more

A Heap of Broken Images

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What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only … Read more

A Street in London W11

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Six stops on the Hammersmith and City from Euston Square to Westbourne Park, up the stairs, along the bridge over the lines that run east to Paddington and west to Wales, Change at Didcot for Oxford, Change at Swindon for Gloucester and Cheltenham Spa. Turn right out of the yellow-brown station past the Extra! Extra! … Read more

School Sabotage and Survival

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I’ve just read Back To My Beginnings by Paddy Staplehurst. It’s a memoir of growing up in St. Etheldreda’s in Bedford – a home for girls that was run by Anglican nuns. Paddy and her younger sister Bille arrive in 1944 to join an older sister, Dawn, after being taken into care by Norfolk County … Read more

Gertrude Stein: Collage and Code

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While T.S.Eliot was skulking about in green face powder, Gertrude Stein was communing with Cubists and inventing linguistic collage. And – this is amazing – developing the code book for the Special Operations Executive of WW2.    Picasso was a frequent visitor to Stein’s salon and they became friends. While Picasso and the other Cubists … Read more

In the Salon with Gertrude Stein

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It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.– Gertrude Stein  As you know from my earlier post I have recently been chatting with Gertrude Stein about her life and particularly aspects of her work Tender Buttons (1914). This was all facilitated … Read more

A Little Called Gertrude Stein

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There, there, said the parent to the anguished child whose ice cream fell to the gutter. There! There! said the whale watcher pointing at the spout on the horizon. There’s no there there, said Gertrude Stein when she visited Oakland in 1934 and found her childhood home razed to the ground. In what they called … Read more