The peak of infatuation

Many of my friends are smitten by mountains.

It’s Jane Austen’s bicentenary

After a performance of the chamber opera Hell’s Angels, featuring nudity and profanity, a lady violinist left the theatre saying, “I think I’ll go home now to read some Jane Austen.”

“Words, words, mere words…”

…as Shakespeare wrote in “Troilus and Cressida”.

“Imprisoned in a cage of sound”

Sounds transcend time, evoking ages past.

“Now the eyes of my eyes are opened”

In praise of trees and life generally.

A plug for Charles Dickens on the 147th anniversary of his death

Dickens’s attention to detail in his novels is often astonishing.

The Pickwick Papers: “A source of amusing and pleasant recollection”

Published 180 years ago, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club became Charles Dickens’s first full-length book.