HOME | CATEGORY HOME | Art | Austria | Christmas | Churchill | Classics | Climate | Climbing | COVID | Culture | English language | English literature | EU | France | Free speech | French literature | German language | German literature | Germany | Goethe | Gotthard | Heine | Heloise Höchner | Misc | Nature | Philosophy | Pound | Religion | Romania | Romansh | Rousseau | Rückert | Schubart | Schubert | Science | Senn | Sociology | Switzerland | UK | UK monarchy | Ukraine | US | Website | WW1 | WW2 61 articles in category 'English literature'. A storm in a coffee cup Skinny latte to go: sailing after knowledge and swimming towards understanding. Richard Law UTC 2026-10-10 12:14 Words: 2,497; reading time: 11 minutes I've got a little list A word with a lost past in Gilbert and Sullivan's 'The Mikado' Richard Law UTC 2026-05-17 07:13 Words: 1,928; reading time: 8 minutes Updated on 2026-05-26 Scrapbook for March Website changes | Narnia: not my cup of tea | Compare and contrast Richard Law UTC 2026-03-01 02:01 Words: 1,246; reading time: 5 minutes In Flanders Fields A third-rate poem with a first-rate fanclub. Will it never die? Richard Law UTC 2025-11-19 08:11 Words: 3,429; reading time: 15 minutes Updated on 2025-12-21 Range-finding Marking Armistice Day with a poem by Robert Frost. Richard Law UTC 2025-11-09 14:19 Words: 1,723; reading time: 7 minutes In the Neolithic Age Kipling's witty words to his critics Richard Law UTC 2025-09-30 12:06 Words: 4,883; reading time: 22 minutes Updated on 2026-02-15 Xenophobia The thinking person's phobia Richard Law UTC 2025-09-20 13:09 Words: 612; reading time: 2 minutes Updated on 2026-03-05 Just So Stories Rudyard Kipling's tales of loss. Richard Law UTC 2025-08-10 12:04 Words: 7,383; reading time: 33 minutes Updated on 2025-08-31 Best Beloved A book at bedtime: Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories Richard Law UTC 2025-07-27 18:14 Words: 2,997; reading time: 13 minutes Bilbo's Progress There and back again Richard Law UTC 2025-07-20 07:22 Words: 7,483; reading time: 34 minutes Updated on 2025-08-14 A Considerable Speck A sentient creature exercising good judgement. Richard Law UTC 2020-11-05 08:12 Words: 127; reading time: 1 minute Quote and images of the month for November Quote: Robert Frost, The Star Splitter. Images: The Orion constellation. UTC 2019-11-01 07:27 Words: 1,602; reading time: 7 minutes The trembling aspen A look at the literary and musical life of a Populus tremula, with a contribution from Franz Schubert. Richard Law UTC 2019-09-27 14:12 Words: 7,116; reading time: 32 minutes Updated on 2025-07-28 Scrapbook for June Boris the Card | Lindenbaum | The choice is theirs | News from the asylum | The last insanity UTC 2019-06-01 02:01 Words: 863; reading time: 3 minutes 13 December: Saint Lucy's Day 220 years ago, William Wordsworth sent his 'Lucy' poems to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Richard Law UTC 2018-12-09 08:04 Words: 4,916; reading time: 22 minutes Updated on 2018-12-17 Quotes and images of the month for December Quotes: George Eliot Journals, Friedrich Hebbel, Diaries. Images: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Virgin and Child. UTC 2018-12-01 07:32 Words: 2,485; reading time: 11 minutes Three early November anniversaries Tristram Shandy's birth, the death of Byron's 'Boatswain' and Arthur Rimbaud's crossing of the Gotthard Pass. Richard Law UTC 2018-11-01 15:28 Words: 2,046; reading time: 9 minutes Scrapbook for September Lunacy of the Year award | Of moles and men | Late summer Tennyson UTC 2018-09-01 02:01 Words: 683; reading time: 3 minutes Scrapbook for August Rattling the begging bowl | Coexistance | Ten to three | The noise of apples falling from trees | Tommy Robinson free | The obituary from Hell UTC 2018-08-01 02:01 Words: 2,056; reading time: 9 minutes The Poetry Bookshop 1913-1935 Just what was needed on the eve of the Great War. Richard Law UTC 2018-07-17 07:43 Words: 3,678; reading time: 16 minutes Updated on 2019-01-06 20 June 1914: blasting and blessing Whipping up an artistic storm as the thunderclouds gather. Richard Law UTC 2018-06-18 17:33 Words: 5,086; reading time: 23 minutes Behind the copyright ramparts Doing dead artists no favours at all. Richard Law UTC 2018-05-11 09:03 Words: 1,193; reading time: 5 minutes 3 May 1810: Lord Byron and Lt. Ekenhead swim across the Hellespont Not as simple as it sounds. Richard Law UTC 2018-05-01 06:34 Words: 5,348; reading time: 24 minutes To Charlotte While Shaving A remarkably prescient verse portrait of the childhood of Theresa May. Richard Law UTC 2018-03-01 07:24 Words: 440; reading time: 2 minutes W.H. Auden's poem The Witnesses Poetry for the social media age. Richard Law UTC 2018-01-10 14:56 Words: 967; reading time: 4 minutes New Year's Greetings from the Oxford Sausage, 1772 Student humour 245 years ago. No safe spaces here. Richard Law UTC 2018-01-01 07:12 Words: 63; reading time: 1 minute A Christmas Carol revisited The time travel subtleties of Dickens' remarkable classic. Richard Law UTC 2017-12-24 11:15 Words: 2,805; reading time: 12 minutes Updated on 2023-06-27 Quote and image of the month for October Quote: Brian Aldiss, Report on Probability A (1969). Image: William Holman Hunt, The Hireling Shepherd (1851). UTC 2017-11-01 01:02 Words: 3,116; reading time: 14 minutes And is there honey still for tea? Rupert Brooke, born 130 years ago. Richard Law UTC 2017-08-07 10:28 Words: 4,455; reading time: 20 minutes The days of wine and roses Ernest Dowson, born 150 years ago. Richard Law UTC 2017-08-04 18:59 Words: 4,946; reading time: 22 minutes The total stress of Tom Bombadil The bit the Lord of the Rings films left behind, thank goodness. Richard Law UTC 2017-07-01 09:44 Words: 5,795; reading time: 26 minutes Quote and image of the month for June Quote: Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. A Story of the French Revolution, 1859. Image: Samuel Bough, London from Shooter's Hill, 1872. UTC 2017-06-01 01:02 Words: 885; reading time: 4 minutes Quote and image of the month for February Quote: George Steiner, Real Presences, 1989. Image: the new Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. UTC 2017-02-01 01:02 Words: 365; reading time: 1 minute The Wind in the Willows A new edition of Kenneth Grahame's classic, beautifully illustrated by David Petersen. Richard Law UTC 2017-02-14 20:01 Words: 142; reading time: 1 minute John Betjeman's poem 'Christmas' It takes a proper Christian to write a Christmas poem. Richard Law UTC 2016-12-18 14:00 Words: 992; reading time: 4 minutes Quote and image of the month for September Quote: Marianne Hem Eriksen, Doors to the dead; T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton. Image: Martinus Rørbye, Entrance to an Inn in the Praestegarden at Hillested. UTC 2016-09-01 01:02 Words: 391; reading time: 1 minute The shipwreck on the winedark sea Tempestuous times for patient polymaths with time on their hands. [7 pages] Richard Law UTC 2016-08-15 07:40 Words: 22,960; reading time: 1 hour 44 minutes The antennae of the race A lot of crackles, whistles and static during a storm-tossed life. Richard Law UTC 2016-08-15 07:41 Words: 1,964; reading time: 8 minutes Non-linear obscurity Looking inside his head. Obscurity, manifestations, light and shade in fragments. Richard Law UTC 2016-08-15 07:42 Words: 4,717; reading time: 21 minutes The Odyssean shipwreck Struggling on with the windswept Odysseus: over, on and under the water. Richard Law UTC 2016-08-15 07:43 Words: 2,519; reading time: 11 minutes Updated on 2023-05-25 The Pisan shipwreck Pound scribbling in the shipwreck of the prison camp. Richard Law UTC 2016-08-15 07:44 Words: 3,809; reading time: 17 minutes The shipwreck in Rock Drill The white goddess hits the waves in an ample bikini. Grab it while you can. Richard Law UTC 2016-08-15 07:45 Words: 4,785; reading time: 21 minutes The shipwreck in Thrones Getting to the end of the journey, somehow. Richard Law UTC 2016-08-15 07:46 Words: 2,805; reading time: 12 minutes Conclusion and bibliography Was it worth it, the great tempest? No. Richard Law UTC 2016-08-15 07:47 Words: 2,315; reading time: 10 minutes Quote and image of the month for July Quote: Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That. Image: William Orpen, Ready To Start. Self Portrait. UTC 2016-07-01 01:02 Words: 828; reading time: 3 minutes Classic books The great unread, a mountain to be climbed? Or shall we just skirt round the outside, like sensible people do? Richard Law UTC 2016-07-16 10:45 Words: 2,675; reading time: 12 minutes Quote and image of the month for June Quote: Basil Bunting, Briggflatts. Image: Aureliano de Beruete, Espinos en flor. Plantío de los Infantes (Flowering Hawthorn). UTC 2016-06-01 01:02 Words: 232; reading time: 1 minute Quote and image of the month for April Quote: William Shakespeare, Cymbeline. Image: Dandelions: Two photos of a Swiss alpine meadow taken three weeks apart. UTC 2016-04-01 01:02 Words: 246; reading time: 1 minute Cherry blossom time Unfortunately coinciding with April snow time this year. Richard Law UTC 2016-04-25 07:21 Words: 154; reading time: 1 minute Tristram's bad start in life, 2 March 1718 Two hundred and ninety-eight years ago Tristram Shandy was conceived – anything but immaculately. Richard Law UTC 2016-03-02 07:16 Words: 663; reading time: 3 minutes From a night of frosty wreck From George Meredith's The Thrush in February. Richard Law UTC 2016-02-27 07:12 Words: 119; reading time: 1 minute The grass on the weirs Serenity amid the tumult of life. Reflection and regret. Richard Law UTC 2016-02-01 13:24 Words: 2,788; reading time: 12 minutes Quote and image of the month for January 2016 Quote: Edward FitzGerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Image: Ivar Arosenius, Backusfest. UTC 2016-01-01 01:02 Words: 228; reading time: 1 minute Hemingway under the hood Let's lift the lid on the genius and his chiasmic creations. Richard Law UTC 2016-01-15 16:34 Words: 1,908; reading time: 8 minutes Updated on 2026-07-25 Bathtime for St. Kevin Seventy-two reasons not to read 'Finnegans Wake'. And one reason to do so. Richard Law UTC 2016-01-09 11:14 Words: 2,704; reading time: 12 minutes Highbrow cat-stroking If you don't mind displaying your intellectual credentials, here's how to do it. Richard Law UTC 2015-11-11 09:26 Words: 117; reading time: 1 minute Quote and image of the month for October Quote: Ezra Pound, The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Image: Édouard Manet, Un bar aux Folies Bergère. UTC 2015-10-01 01:02 Words: 153; reading time: 1 minute Troubling the living stream Easter 1916: The stony heart of fanaticism as seen by W.B. Yeats. Richard Law UTC 2015-10-19 07:11 Words: 1,742; reading time: 7 minutes Business Girls John Betjeman. For once not the lovable eccentric with a fondness for women, old buildings and steam railways, but the poet. The very good poet. Richard Law UTC 2015-10-15 08:07 Words: 554; reading time: 2 minutes How to end an extremely long poem You have scribbled 6,000 lines of impenetrable poetry. How do you stop? Like this. Richard Law UTC 2015-10-11 14:00 Words: 279; reading time: 1 minute Atlas Shrugged: 'Whatever…'. The great unread: a literary assessment of Ayn Rand's magnum opus. As doorstopper, serviceable; as novel, beyond awful. Richard Law UTC 2015-10-10 09:16 Words: 2,029; reading time: 9 minutes
