Punishing treatment

Bleeding for Jesus: John Smyth and the Cult of the Iwerne Camps Andrew Graystone, Darton, Longman & Todd, £12.99 KEN BELL winces through a sad story of sadistic abuse and cover-up John Smyth QC had a public image in the 1970s and 1980s as a conservative activist who worked with Mary Whitehouse in her failed…

Unfinished symphony in Oz

R. J. STOVE says reports of the death of Australian classical music education have been greatly exaggerated The most satisfying paid regular employment that I have ever experienced concluded on 11 November 2021. For a twelve-week course, I worked as a sessional tutor under the University of Sydney’s auspices. The tutorials – overarching title: ‘Music in…

Five poems by J. M. Jordan

J. M. JORDAN recently began writing again after a twenty-year hiatus. He is a Georgia (US) native, a Virginia resident, and a homicide detective by profession. His poems have appeared in Arion: A Journal of Classics and the Humanities, The Chattahoochee Review, Chronicles, Image Journal, Louisiana Literature, The Potomac Review and elsewhere.   The Golden Key I He…

From ‘The Wounded Cavalier’

These poems by BEVIL LUCK are from a dream-sequence set in the country house and garden of a cavalier who has fled the English Civil War. As his wound festers and the war is lost he languishes in the country, waiting for his lost love, all the while slowly becoming aware of other, older presences…