Sunday, November 15, 2026

'Gasping, Staggering, Stammering Tom Fool '

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I fancy myself the mild-mannered sort but I enjoy vituperation in others, especially if it’s caustic, unfair and articulate, and you can alm...
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Saturday, November 14, 2026

'Little or No True Value'

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Just as songs and commercial jingles randomly enter my consciousness, without me having heard them, some dating back sixty years or more, so...
1 comment:
Friday, November 13, 2026

'The Gift of Reading'

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From A Sunday of Liberty I’ve learned that the kindergarten has been in an uproar again. This time it’s over that eternally debated question...
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Thursday, November 12, 2026

'A Universally Acknowledged Truth'

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Boswell recalls several observations made by Johnson on September 22, 1777: “Dr. Johnson advised me to-day to have as many books about me as...
3 comments:
Wednesday, November 11, 2026

'As Though Nothing But Joy Came After!'

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At the back of the first American edition of his Great War memoir Undertones of War (1929), Edmund Blunden appends a selection of thirty-on...
Tuesday, November 10, 2026

'War Is an Ancient Imposter'

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“It was a sunny morning, that of July 1, 1916. The right notes for it would have been the singing of blackbirds and the ringing of the black...
Monday, November 09, 2026

'But You Call This Instinct'

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Tucked into a brief section at the back of The Poems of Edmund Blunden (Cobden-Sanderson, 1930) titled “Occasional Pieces” is “Under a Thou...
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