I owe much of my interest in the seventeenth century to the late historian, Christopher Hill (1912-2003). I went to see Justin Champion deliver an impassioned defence of Hill and his work at a memorial lecture in Newark. … More Christopher Hill, Andrew Marvell, and the Dissenting Tradition
How an Australian teen sci-fi drama series from the early 1990s shows remarkable parallels with the current Brexit debacle. … More Tomorrow’s End
Why do we always seem to be drawn to what we don’t have? The stumbling block of how to pursue academic publications without fear of rejection. … More The Politics of Envy
10 things I took away from the IWMW 2018 event on ‘Streamlining Digital’ at the University of York. … More 10 things I learnt at IWMW 2018
Next week, I’ll be giving my first conference presentation in five years, and this time under the mantle of my new profession. … More Hands off – it’s ours! Taking back the reins.
The difficulties of dealing with involuntary celibacy, from desolation to misogyny, seem to haunt some of Andrew Marvell’s most famous lyric poems. … More Was Marvell a seventeenth-century ‘incel’?
Review of Kate Loveman, Samuel Pepys & His Books: Reading, Newsgathering & Sociability, 1660-1703 (Oxford University Press, 2015). … More Samuel Pepys and His Books
Hanya Yanagihara’s enrapturing novel A Little Life (2015) finds astonishing depths in suffering and the efforts to make it tolerable. … More A Little Life
I was reminded this week how nerve-wracking it can be getting to grips with a master’s, and why I have my supervisor to thank for it. … More Learning a new language
There is no hard evidence that Andrew Marvell’s ‘Horatian Ode’ ever left his hands. Yet, it may have come to John Dryden’s attention. How is Dryden the privileged one? A brief study of hard and soft evidence. … More Marvell, Dryden, and the Horatian Ode
