“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?” – Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice Nicola Sturgeon, the divisive former First Minister of Scotland, has published her memoir Frankly. Far from a triumph, it has been met with scathing reviews from critics who see her legacy as one of…
As might be guessed from Seamus Feamus, I’ve been reading – and thoroughly enjoying – The Pilgrimage of Peregrine Prykke. (How did I get to this age without having read it before?) This is Clive James’s parody of 1970s literary London and it got me thinking about the enduring and peculiar proclivity of poetical types to self-pollinate and propagate peculiar…
In what would have been the week of Seamus Heaney ‘s 86th birthday – here is Clive James ventriloquist. Performed at the ICA in London in 1974: These were the Belfast poets — all called Seamus — Of whom the leading light was SEAMUS FEAMUS, Who even now attacked his midday meal: Two slabs of peat around a conger eel. ‘White spoors of cockle,’…