When you stand on the shore of Grasmere on a grey October morning, watching mist curl off the water like something alive, you start to understand why a small group of poets abandoned city life for this corner of England over two centuries ago. The landscape itself seems to demand a different kind of attention. … Read more
The Romantic poets rebelled against the neoclassical ideals of decorum, hierarchy, reason, and order that had dominated eighteenth-century poetry and thought. In place of these, they embraced the spontaneous, the emotional, the imaginative, and the irrational. This was not a minor stylistic shift. It was a full-scale revolution in how poets understood their art, their … Read more
I have watched Brideshead Revisited three times in my life, and each viewing has rewarded me differently. The first time, I was a teenager drawn in by the golden interiors and the languid Oxford afternoons. The second time, as a university student, I noticed the theological machinery clicking beneath every scene. The third time, in … Read more
Around 27 million of us in the UK describe ourselves as active gardeners. That is roughly four in every ten adults, all tending flower beds, vegetable patches, hanging baskets, or window boxes. The number alone explains part of the answer to why the English are so attached to their gardens: this is not a niche … Read more
Ask any serious theatregoer which company most defines how Shakespeare is performed today, and one name comes up again and again: the Royal Shakespeare Company. But what separates the Royal Shakespeare Company from every other theatre in Britain, or indeed the world? The answer is not just that it stages Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon. Plenty of … Read more