The Telegraph recently published an article entitled “Liberating, not lonely: the truth about being single”. The problem with this message is that it marginalises the importance of choice. A brief examination of an alternative ‘truth’. … More Liberating, not lonely? Another truth about being single.
After six years of anonymity here at Writing Privacy, I’ve decided that it’s time to reveal myself. … More An End to Anonymity
A line of work we don’t think about too often is what happens to the dead when there’s nobody left. A poem by Rory Waterman and Uberto Pasolini’s remarkable ‘Still Life’ (2013) give us plenty of room for thought. … More Still Life
2014 had all the ingredients to be the best year I’ve ever had. That it turned out to be one of the worst is quite remarkable. … More Finite Fortunes: An Epilogue, 2014
A reflection on a love of teaching and why I’ve turned down the long-awaited chance to do it again. … More Letting Your Chance Go By
I’ve been trying hard – so hard – to force a change of mentality in recent weeks. But it doesn’t half bring forth its challenges, and that was truly epitomised this week. … More The Frightening Rule of ‘If’, not ‘When’
This week marked the fourth anniversary of Writing Privacy. Time for a long-overdue makeover, I thought. And perhaps more importantly, time for a change. … More Time For A Change
These end-of-year epilogues have become invariably sad affairs. Of course, I would prefer that it was different, but I still believe that they help me channel energies in a better way. Last year – in what I still believe to be my best ever contribution here – I said that structural positives had been offset by surface negatives. Now, the poles have changed. … More An Eye to Every Storm: An Epilogue, 2012
Writing the final chapter of my thesis has been traumatic. The internal negotiations that Marvell faced and the impossibility of choice he so often found himself with leave him trapped in a life that offers so little solace. … More Broken Dreams: Marvell’s Poetics of Privacy
I’ve often thought that Andrew Marvell’s life and my own show distinct traces of overlap, and it’s never escaped me that this may be one of the reasons why I identify so closely with his writing. … More Writing Lives: Marvell and Biography
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