Graduate of BNC, lover of literature, education consultant, trustee, salmon curer. Novice twitterer; Shropshire Lad.
Joined February 2012
- Tweets 149
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30 Photos and videos
10 Aug 2025
Then scratching the surface of the Caen Memorial Museum - which is excellent btw …
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10 Aug 2025
Quite a last day in France - first trying to find the tomb of Gregory of Tours in Tours…
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20 Mar 2025
In Our Time - Thomas Middleton - BBC Sounds Excellent IOT on Middleton. I found an old BBC radio version of A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (Richard Briers, Hugh Paddick, Sian Phillips). Hugely enjoyable. Why isn’t this play (and others) revived more often?! bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00290…
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David James retweeted
6 Jan 2025
OK - I get why Leavis says it doesn’t deserve its place of pre-eminence in Conrad’s works, but Lord Jim is an astonishingly powerful and astonishingly contemporary study of male identity. Right up there with the best of Conrad imo.
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13 Dec 2024
Weren’t those Penguin Classics covers wonderful! I do miss them. The subsequent versions have never quite matched the old ones - 70’s and 80’s IMO - but this may well be a sign of age ofc … Does anyone share my enthusiasm?!
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11 Dec 2024
But I do struggle with Nostromo - possibly the greatest novel of the C20th century according to Walter Allen - but for me not succeeding overall, despite some wonderful things. I formed this view in 1979 and rereading has not changed that view - eg compare Decoud and Axel Heist
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11 Dec 2024
This is even better - Razumov, Ziemianitch, Miss Haldin - superb. Up there with Dostoyevsky IMHU…
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11 Dec 2024
Continuing my reading of Conrad - not sure I agree with Leavis’s assessment that it’s one of Conrad’s supreme masterpieces - but it’s very good.
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5 Nov 2024
And for my money the depiction of the storm in the novella - as well as the profound moral implication of the work - is superior to Typhoon.
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5 Nov 2024
I would certainly concur with Jocelyn Baines that ‘Heyst is perhaps the most interesting, and certainly the most complex, character that Conrad created’. And Leavis (gnomically) that ‘it answers most nearly to the stock notion of his genius’.
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7 Sep 2024
I didn’t think it was Laura’s role to produce headlines for the Daily Mail … have I misunderstood something? bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx28…
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26 Aug 2024
I’ve always regarded Conrad as a bit - well - foreign - but this has caused me to concur with Leavis’s judgment that he is “among the very greatest novelists in the language - or in any language.” It’s an astonishing read.
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2 Jul 2024
Just realised how annoyed I am at the Tory suggestion that the country may be “sleepwalking” into a Labour government. I couldn’t feel more awake and alert to the options facing the country. This allegation of somnambulism is typically condescending and insulting.
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27 May 2024
Staggered - but then not so staggered - that the National Service rabbit has been dragged out of the Tory hat. The fact that it’s in the name of encouraging social responsibility amongst young people is breathtaking. Or has this government had a Damascus moment?!
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9 May 2024
recognising the safeguarding implications and the importance of consulting parents/carers, wherever possible.
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9 May 2024
So responding to the local and mayoral election results at the weekend, Suella Braverman thinks we must tackle the “transgender ideology in our schools”. What transgender ideology? Government guidance is sensible, humane and balanced bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67754359
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12 Apr 2024
The sun finally came out in Brittany, reminding me why I’m so invested my renovation project.
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