That scar – as the old nurse cradled his leg and her hands passed down she felt it, knew it, suddenly let his foot fall – down it dropped in the basin – the bronze clanged, tipping over, spilling water across the floor. Joy and torment gripped her heart at once, tears rushed to her …
Excerpt from the Ministerial and Other Salaries Amendment Act 2025: In the case of the aforementioned offices a salary may be paid to each holder of office subject to the limitations expressed below, that is to say— – That it is within the jurisdiction of the Prime Minister to appoint any number of Secretaries of …
Believe it or not, an old teacher of mine asked me to read this slight book in my final year of high school, assuring me it would be life-changing. I mean, I wouldn’t go as far as that, but it’s certainly interesting. It may be just a short children’s story about a lonely wolf, but …
On an iron-grey Tuesday night earlier this week, the first floor of Waterstones Piccadilly was filled with the murmur of voices from a truly staggering array of cultures. It was an evening in celebration of Arabic literature and the launch of the fifty-fifth issue of the Banipal magazine. The magazine itself is significantly named for …
Deep in the heart of Mossflower country, nestled between the emerald woods and the sprawling meadowland, stands an ancient abbey. It was built from red standstone by the first mice centuries ago, and even now, with the fiery red cloak of ivy draped over its south face, it burns as brightly as it did back …
Stars wheel in the water,giddy whirl of green flameblazing at prow and stern,sentinels burning seaof darkness visible but do not hide your fires,lone light in this abysswhere compass needles spin,cloying cyst where I floatadrift on shining darkwaves, lost in hail-mingled star frost, sending sensesout across silent glassof confused reflections:forces that bind, createorder, hidden in greenglimmer …
“So shall you hear Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, Of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, And, in the upshot, purposes mistook Fallen on th’inventors’ heads.” Lords of Kobol, this is seriously challenging The Tempest to be my most favourite play of all time. It should be …
“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something,” said a pensive Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit. Walking into the Sir John Ritblat Gallery at the magnificent British Library in the heart of London evokes just this feeling. You may not know what you’re looking for, or that you’re even looking for anything …
Mist gathering with the sparrow song, seeping into the winter silence left by the nightingale, even the trees bereft, frost coating grass-blades in suits of glass armour, and her eyes guarded as the cloud-cloven sun, tired, bitter-pale, a rose frozen. A sky painted in the grey of wolf-fur, stretched and strangled and pinned to stars …
Clouds shrouding San Gabriel peaks warp with burning force amassing in the ink-depths where darkness seeks, eats stars, meets night’s hellfire passing. I thought those cliffs steel-infused rock until the crudely carved crag-words began to melt, their stories unlock in time’s inferno of lost chords. All the world is ice and flaming fame that blazes …
“I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information,” said Christopher Hitchens. One of the most incendiary voices of the last half-century, whatever his intent Hitchens encapsulated the sentiment of a generation with this statement, a widespread disillusionment with journalism amidst the rise of the internet, capitalism, corporate conglomerates, …
At first glance, this mutant sonnet penned by the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins appears to be a wonderful if slightly perplexing celebration of God and Nature. In the first half hour or so studying this elusive little poem I remained so fixated by the vibrancy and elegance of the imagery I overlooked what actually …
“Life etches itself onto our faces as we grow older, showing our violence, excesses or kindnesses.” — Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (unsure of translation origin but it’s all over the internet) It was on the advice of one of my former teachers that I decided to visit the new exhibition at the National Gallery soon after …
In the introduction to A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway’s grandson records that he wrote “on the principle of the iceberg. For the part that shows there are seven-eighths more underwater”. The story follows Frederic Henry, an American lieutenant serving as an ambulance driver on the Italian front in WWI. He is wounded while eating cheese …
April 2014 People. That’s one of the things that struck me most about my first visit to China. The vast, vast number of people. The ocean of hats throughout Tiananmen Square, the endless queues waiting to see Mao, the crush of bodies on the local buses, the bustling streets of Shanghai, the utterly packed train …
It is an appalling yet all-too-familiar dereliction that I studied various military histories throughout Scottish high school, including the Vietnam War, and yet emerged on the other side utterly oblivious to the magnitude of inhumanity wrought on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos during that conflict. The horrors of the Vietnam War represented one of the darkest …
So, The Republic… A thought-train. My favourite aspects of Plato’s writings in this book are his concepts of “philosopher kings” ruling society in an autocracy, and of the tripartite soul. The Platonic Academy in Athens was the first of its kind, and it was just one of Plato’s legacies between 428BC and 347BC. It was …
