Catherine Brown

A century and twelve years ago, an aristocrat and her middle class husband moved into number 44 Bedford Square. A century and…

…Studying English as Transformational: Part II So much for canniness. But then there is fulness and wisdom of living – what my…

What is ‘transformational’ about studying, specifically, English literature? English by its nature concerns itself with as much as literature itself does, and…

But after that, the War will still live on: through people’s memories of what their older friends and relatives have told them of these things (first directly, then at second hand)

So нелюбовь is a noun not an adjective, and the film is about that thing: the non-love which mutually connects Boris and Zhenya – a contemporary, bourgeois, Muscovite divorcing couple – and which connects both to their twelve-year-old son Alyosha (a name with connotations of innocence, being that of the saintly youngest Karamazov brother in Dostoevsky’s 1880 novel). Part way through, Alyosha disappears. The rest of the film concerns his parents’ unsuccessful effort to find him alive, whilst both of them pursue new relationships.

They don’t require sacrifice or exclusivity yet they may bring light upon what real qualities are worth loving.

The digested read on The Death of Stalin: It’s controversial and I was prepared to hate it, but I liked it. The…

Jaya Savige (JS): Yes, I’d just read the news of Walcott’s death when we saw each other at Trevor Nunn’s guest lecture [on directing Shakespeare], and you’re right, I was unusually moved, for one specific reason: I just so happened to have been obsessively reading and rereading a poem of his called The Gulf, on the train to and from work that week, and even earlier that day. I wasn’t aware he was close to passing, so when I saw the news on the BBC I was a little shocked by the fact that I’d just been reading him, had been reading him in his last days, and maybe even in his final moments. When I saw you I was still in the first stages of processing this coincidence.

There are, I find, many advantages to being born relatively late for your generation. Your parents know pretty much what they are about; they grow old when you still have a strong arm with which to support them; and, most importantly, they connect you to a bigger historical span.

It is with some trepidation that I blog for the first time about Donald Trump.

It is partly because I feel such trepidation that I feel the need to do so.

Donald Trump is a gifted demagogue, an ungifted, inexperienced politician, and an ignorant, under-principled President of the United States. In some of his long-held desires, and some of those produced temporarily by the influence of advisers, he threatens and damages individuals, peace, and nature around the world. The United States and all other countries would be much better off with a much better President, and I hope that one is elected to office as soon as possible.

A walking tour of Bloomsbury by Head of Faculty & Senior Lecturer in English Dr Catherine Brown, created for the 14th International…

The closest Shakespeare got to (co-)writing a play about the monarchs of his place and day was Henry VIII, and that was six decades out of date. Three years ago English playwright Mike Bartlett wrote a blank verse play about the fates of kings, and the dalliance of a young Prince Harry with commoners, which was set in the near future. This month it was broadcast as a television film.