Page 63 - Robert Browning News Today

From the NS archive: Cobwebs on Hardy 16 May 1942: Would Thomas Hardy have been one of the great English poets? By Stephen Spender In this review of Edmund Blunden’s new biography of Thomas Hardy, Stephen Spender questions the author’s method. Blunden tracks the reception of Hardy’s work, taking the approach “of a guide book”. Spender is convinced by the biography that Hardy’s life was boring and uneventful — but its examination of Hardy’s under-explored poetry redeems the acc...

They Might Click on a Dance Floor Natan Last, Andy Kravis and the members of the JASA crossword constructing class bring us together over a very clever theme. The Spanish flamenco dancer Carolina Morgado held castanets as she performed at the citadel of Erbil, the northern Iraqi city and capital of the semiautonomous Kurdish region, in 2019.Credit...SAFIN HAMED/AFP, via Getty Images Jan. 19, 2021 WEDNESDAY PUZZLE — An administrivial alert regarding the comments system: Thank you for your pati...

Clifford T Ward CLIFFORD T Ward was the local pop star who could well have become a superstar but for one thing – his longing for his Stourport home. And now, as the 20th anniversary of his death approaches, the people of Wyre Forest are being asked if they can help repay that with a small act of remembrance. The Stourport-born singer-songwriter might have had the world at his feet in the 1960s and 70s after a hit single and album and a series of appearances on Top of The Pops, The Old ...

Rating: Derry/Londonderry – where even the choice of name reflects ‘which foot you kick with’ – has a compelling and fractious history. It has often been synonymous with sectarian tensions, not least at the violent onset of the Troubles in the early 1970s, during which large numbers of Protestants moved to the Waterside, while Catholics stayed on the Cityside. The writer Kerri ní Dochartaigh not only grew up amid these divisions in the 1980s, but, with a Protestant father and a Cathol...

  “As Americans get vaccinated, they must decide whether to remember the people who sacrificed to keep stores open and hospitals afloat, the president who lied to them throughout 2020 and consigned them to disaster, the families still grieving, the long-haulers still suffering, the weaknesses of the old normal, and the costs of reaching the new one. They must decide whether to resist the decay of memory….’’  -- Ed Yong, who writes on science for The Atlantic. He has degrees in zoology...

How to tell your new year fortune the Edwardian way In the early 20th Century, Britain was gripped by a reading craze Daniel Smith No Edwardian stepped into the new year without a book There are always big stories on WalesOnline - dont miss any with our daily emailInvalid EmailSomething went wrong, please try again later. Sign me up now When you subscribe we will use the information you provide to send you these newsletters. Sometimes they’ll include recommendations for other related newslett...

How to tell your new year fortune the Edwardian way In the early 20th Century, Britain was gripped by a reading craze Daniel Smith No Edwardian stepped into the new year without a book (Image: Getty Images) Never miss another Leicestershire story by signing up to our free email updatesInvalid EmailSomething went wrong, please try again later. Sign up When you subscribe we will use the information you provide to send you these newsletters. Sometimes they’ll include recommendations for other re...

This brief, fragmentary book by Max Porter is an attempt to fill the silence of those last six days from within the painter’s head. Written in an allusive and sometimes vividly poetic shorthand, it tries to capture in language some of the texture of Bacon’s tormented canvases, as well as the chaos of his love life. The book is divided into seven chapters of no more than eight small pages. All the chapters begin with Bacon’s invitation to his nurse to sit by his bedside while his ...

Finding the balance between the twin myths of Graham Greene’s inner demons and his questing spirit. Graham Greene, ca. 1960. Photo: Bridgeman Images By D.J. Taylor I n stark chronological terms, Graham Greene (1904-1991) was a member of that spangled generation of British writers born in the golden decade between 1900 and 1910, a logjam of talent that included such mighty timbers as George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh (both born in 1903), Christopher...

How Sugathakumari’s classic poem reached masses Updated: Updated: G. Venugopal’s rendition of Krishna Neeyenne Ariyilla helped it capture public imagination Share Article G. Venugopal’s rendition of Krishna Neeyenne Ariyilla helped it capture public imagination Poetry is not, by any stretch of imagination, the most popular form of literature. Still, there are some poems that capture the imagination of the public, they reach out to even those who are not into poetry. Sugathakumari’s Kr...