In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews John Plotz’s personal reading of a fantasy classic by Ursula K. Le Guin The American author Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) is widely regarded as one of the finest authors of what is broadly termed ‘speculative fiction’.... Continue reading >> [ Source: Interesting Literature | 2023-10-13 14:00:53 UTC ]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle ponders the links between famous writers and advertising slogans Fay Weldon, author of The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983), is one of several famous novelists who started out in the field of advertising. In this connection... Continue reading >> [ Source: Interesting Literature | 2021-07-23 14:00:03 UTC ]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys the comic verse by one of the most ‘miserable’ poets in English literature ‘The Crocodile or, Public Decency’ is not one of the best-known poems of A. E. Housman (1859-1936), the classical scholar and poet who failed his […] Continue reading >> [ Source: Interesting Literature | 2020-09-18 14:00:40 UTC ]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses a poem that represents the meeting-point of ancient riddle and modern nonsense ‘I Saw a Peacock’ is an anonymous nonsense poem that is included in Quentin Blake’s The Puffin Book of Nonsense Verse (Puffin Poetry), a... Continue reading >> [ Source: Interesting Literature | 2020-07-03 14:00:44 UTC ]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle examines a famous phrase derived from Shakespeare The old line about Hamlet, that it’s ‘too full of quotations’, wittily sums up the play’s influence on not just English literature but on the everyday language we use. Many of us... Continue reading >> [ Source: Interesting Literature | 2020-05-29 14:00:47 UTC ]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews Stephen King’s early non-fiction book about horror In 1999, the prolific author Stephen King had his own dance with death. One afternoon, he was walking on the shoulder of a road near his home in the US state […] The... Continue reading >> [ Source: Interesting Literature | 2020-02-28 15:00:22 UTC ]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reads the first novel in Isaac Asimov’s juvenile science fiction series Science fiction set in our own solar system arguably began with Lucian, the classical author whose short satirical piece True History paved the way for... Continue reading >> [ Source: Interesting Literature | 2019-11-15 15:00:55 UTC ]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a new anthology of classic horror stories Shortly after receiving my review copies of Darryl Jones’s informative and engaging history of the horror genre, Sleeping with the Lights On, the publishers, Oxford University... Continue reading >> [ Source: Interesting Literature | 2019-10-25 14:00:45 UTC ]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys some vintage science fiction courtesy of The Best of John Wyndham, 1932-1949 I’ve blogged before about my discovery of John Wyndham’s science fiction in a local charity shop, which had a number of old paperbacks for 99p... Continue reading >> [ Source: Interesting Literature | 2019-07-05 14:00:22 UTC ]