The story so far. In the 5th century Vortigern’s attempt to hold the imperial province of Britannia together has been defeated, not by external enemies but by British rebels led by Vortimer, his eldest son. Vortimer is a devout Christian and has invited the Pope to send an embassy to restore the Church, and combat…
Four poems by Jeremy Hooker
JEREMY HOOKER is a poet, critic and editor. His work for BBC Radio 3 includes ‘A Map of David Jones’. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, and an emeritus professor of the University of South Wales. His Selected Poems was published by Shearsman in…
Five poems from The Book of Merlin
LARRY BECKETT’s poetry ranges from songs, Song to the Siren, to blank sonnets, Songs and Sonnets, to the epic American Cycle, including Paul Bunyan, Wyatt Earp, Amelia Earhart, and seven other book-length poems. Beat Poetry is a study of the poets and poetry of the fifties San Francisco renaissance. The Book of Merlin will be…
Three poems by Ian C. Smith
IAN C. SMITH’s work has been published in Across the Margin, BBC Radio 4 Sounds,The Dalhousie Review, Gargoyle, Griffith Review, Southword, Stand, & The Stony Thursday Book. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island. Prologue ‘And yet to…
Thomas Malory’s civilisation-shaping chivalry
Photo; Shutterstock LIAM GUILAR revisits the too little-read Le Morte Darthur According to the blurb for one Audible version of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur: Comparing Batman, Superman, and Captain America to Sir Launcelot, Sir Tristram, and Sir Galahad isn't a huge leap of the imagination. Perhaps, for the 15th century reader, King Arthur…
A poet’s pole position
Arctic Elegies Peter Davidson, Carcanet, 2022, pb., 72pps. £11.99 DEREK TURNER feels impelled to look to the north There are poets associated with particular places, or special states of mind, but Peter Davidson has made a geo-poetical genre of his own, as celebrant of a cardinal point. His interests are wide-ranging, but magnetized in one…
A Man of Heart – the scribe’s story
LIAM GUILAR continues his epic of early Britain The story so far. In the 5th century Vortigern’s attempt to hold the imperial province of Britannia together has been defeated, not by external enemies but by British rebels led by Vortimer, his eldest son. Vortimer is a devout Christian and has invited the Pope to send…
A wasted ‘life’ of The Waste Land
Image: Derek Turner The Waste Land – A Biography of a Poem Matthew Hollis, Faber & Faber, 2022, 524pps., £20 LIAM GUILAR is disappointed by a would-be biography of the landmark poem If any twentieth century poem deserves a biography, it is T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. First published in 1922, it was, and is,…
The Prince’s side
Spare Prince Harry, Bantam, 2023, 416pps., £20 KEN BELL finds the Prince’s blockbuster book unexpectedly engaging There can be few people in the English-speaking world who have not read a review of Spare, the memoir written by Prince Harry, and it is a pity that so many of those reviews seem to have been written…
Coster living
Beer-makers, Clapham Common, 1877. Wikimedia Commons Street Food: Hawkers and the History of London Charlie Taverner, Oxford University Press, 2023, 256pps, £30 KEN BELL remembers the street-traders who fed a burgeoning city The image of London street food is a trendy one, with well-paid hipsters eating what they sweetly tell each other is authentic, usually…