Martin Geeson
Oscar Wilde: Art and Morality
“Who can help laughing when an ordinary journalist seriously proposes to limit the subject-matter at the disposal of the artist?”“We are dom…
Hero and Leander
“Who ever lov’d, that lov’d not at first sight?”The wonder-decade of the English drama was suddenly interrupted in 1592, when serious plague…
The Dancing Mania
Numerous theories have been proposed for the causes of dancing mania, and it remains unclear whether it was a real illness or a social pheno…
A Problem in Modern Ethics
“Society lies under the spell of ancient terrorism and coagulated errors. Science is either wilfully hypocritical or radically misinformed.”…
The Greek View of Life
“With the Greek civilisation beauty perished from the world. Never again has it been possible for man to believe that harmony is in fact the…
The Mabinogion, Volume 1
Sample a moment of magic realism from the Red Book of Hergest:On one side of the river he saw a flock of white sheep, and on the other a flo…
Zastrozzi, A Romance
“Would Julia of Strobazzo’s heart was reeking on my dagger!”From the asthmatic urgency of its opening abduction scene to the Satanic defianc…
Bible (Wycliffe) 21: Ecclesiastes
“... an alemaunde tre schal floure, a locuste schal be maad fat, and capparis schal be distried; for a man schal go in to the hous of his eu…
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Listeners who like to plunge straight into a story would do well to skip the lengthy preamble. Here, Balzac the virtuoso satirist depicts th…