Category: Musings
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Keat’s House
I have visited Keat’s House in Hampstead, London but I didn’t know there was a similar place by the Spanish Steps in the middle of Rome. A delightful small house, modestly elegant, at the base of the steps, hidden in plain sight. Apart from anything else, this little museum is an oasis of calm and […]
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Rebus
I certainly didn’t intend to see any of the BBC’s strangulation of Ian Rankin’s Rebus programmes but I did, not once but twice, catch the last ten minutes of two episodes. Don’t be tempted by it. However skilled the actor, he is certainly not John Rebus. OM goodness the books are so,so much better and […]
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Sally Rooney in Hebrew?
Going sideways from the previous musing, in amongst the media hype and TV adaptations of books by Sally Rooney, I was fascinated to see she had refused to allow her work to be translated into Hebrew and thus for sale in Israel. Authors are usually delighted for their work to be sent around the world […]
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Irish Writers
Why are there so many well-known and successful Irish writers, particularly over the last decade I pondered. In a recent (excellent) article I read about Colm Toibin, he acknowledges the energy and power that seem to resonate through Irish fiction and indeed somewhat dominates the Booker long list. Anne Enright and Anna Burns come to […]
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The Waiting Game
In Heffers bookshop in Cambridge a few days ago I was tempted by 2 large, heavy, new hardbacks. The first is this state of the nation novel by Andrew O’Hagan: ‘Caledonian Road’ which every reviewer is indeed reviewing and I long to read. I have walked down said road in north London and I wouldn’t […]
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Reading Aloud
Do you like reading aloud I wonder? Do you like listening to someone reading aloud? Many have quite strong feelings about this, one way or the other. I don’t as yet indulge in audiobooks although I know many who do, but I used to enjoy listening to books read aloud on Radio 4. Stephen Fry […]
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Greetings
At the end of the Radio 3 breakfast show, the presenter Petroc Trelawny finishes by saying Good Morning. It occurred to me that using those words to say goodbye rather than hello has become very unusual, some would say quite dated and old fashioned. I then thought about how various greetings have changed over time. […]
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Have you noticed?
Have you noticed that if the stress is on the first syllable then the word is usually a noun. If the emphasis comes on the second syllable then it is usually a verb. object record present content
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February 2nd
The date of the birth of James Joyce, strangely and nicely noted and commemorated this morning on the Radio 3 breakfast programme. They then played ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song’ which runs through the narrative and is used to signify Molly Bloom. Joyce had to wait until he was 40 before Ulysses was eventually published in […]