Report of the Thirty-Ninth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Julianne Newmark The Border-Line Thursday...
Catherine Brown
D. H. Lawrence and: Volcanoes
Report of the Thirty-Eighth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Shirley Bricout Lawrence and Volcanoes ...
D. H. Lawrence and: Bolshevism
Report of the Thirty-Seventh Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group John Pateman Lawrence and Bolshevism ...
The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, Sydenham, and St Petersburg
The following article is the pre-edited version of a chapter in Cultures of London: Legacies of Migration edited by...
D. H. Lawrence and: Anaïs Nin
Report of the Thirty-Sixth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Blake Matich An Unprofessional Lecture: Anaïs...
D. H. Lawrence and: the Road to Vence Part 2 1928-1930
Report of the Thirty-Fifth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Robert Bullock The Rest of the Road to Vence:...
D. H. Lawrence and: Sardinian Ecology
Report of the Thirty-Fourth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Terry Gifford Lawrence, Sardinia and Ecology...
D. H. Lawrence and: Richard Aldington
Report of the Thirty-Third Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Philip Chester Tit & Tat: A Tale of...
D. H. Lawrence and: Windows
Report of the Thirty-Second Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Tina Ferris Windows Imagery in D. H. Lawrence's...
D. H. Lawrence and: Geology
Report of the Thirty-First Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Shirley Bricout Rock Imagery in...
D. H. Lawrence and: Hampstead
Report of the Thirtieth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Catherine Brown A Walking Tour of Lawrence's...
D. H. Lawrence and: The Road to Vence Part I 1928-1929
Report of the Twenty-Ninth meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Robert Bullock The Road to Vence 1928-1929...
D. H. Lawrence and: Figurative Animals
Report of the Twenty-Eighth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Maria Trejling Flickering Figures:...
Childhood Viewed from Middle Age: A Comparison of Retrospection in Sebastian Faulks’s Engleby and Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield
This paper was delivered at the 30th international scientific conference, ‘The Historical Past and the Present in...
No 2 NATO, No 2 War
On 25th February 2023 I attended a speaker meeting in London criticising what it considered NATO’s and the US’s...
D. H. Lawrence and: Whether or Not?
Report of the Twenty-Seventh Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Jim Phelps ‘Whether or Not?’ ...
D. H. Lawrence and: Aaron’s Rod
Report of the Twenty-Sixth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Axel Englund A Musical Self? On...
D. H. Lawrence and: David
Report of the Twenty-Fifth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group SHIRLEY BRICOUT WITH CATHERINE...
D. H. Lawrence and: the Young Russian
Report of the Twenty-Fifth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group The real ‘Young Russian’: the daughter of...
D. H. Lawrence and: Pedagogy
Report of the Twenty-Seventh Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Audra Belmore, Shirley Bricout,...
D. H. Lawrence and: the Cearne
Report of the Twenty-Third Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Jane and Dudley Nichols Walking Literary...
D. H. Lawrence and: Historiography
Report of the Twenty-Seventh Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Michael Bell Lawrence and...
D. H. Lawrence and: Gaudier-Brzeska
Report of the Twenty-Seventh Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Jane Costin The Sculptor and the Novelist...
D. H. Lawrence and: Patriarchs
Report of the Twentieth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Shirley Bricout D. H. Lawrence and...
D. H. Lawrence and: Genre
Report of the Nineteenth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Simonetta de Filippis Genre...
D. H. Lawrence and: Insects
Report of the Eighteenth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Rachel Murray Insects, Irritation...
D.H. Lawrence, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fascism
The following paper was delivered at the (online) 34th annual international D. H. Lawrence Conference 'Lawrence and...
Book chapter on ‘Modernism’ for ‘The Edinburgh Companion to Vegan Literary Studies’
The following is a pre-edited version of my chapter on 'Modernism' for The Edinburgh Companion to Vegan...
Literary Academic in Lockdown: Gains, Losses and Risks
This post was written as an article for the journal Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 258:2...
D. H. Lawrence and Guns
The following short paper was delivered at the international virtual symposium 'D. H. Lawrence: Distance and...
Response to Freya Johnston’s Review of ‘Burning Man’
The following short letter to Prospect magazine to Freya Johnston's review of Frances Wilson's 2021 biography of D. H....
D. H. Lawrence and: Musicals
Report of the Seventeenth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Glyn Bailey and Colleagues Learning...
D. H. Lawrence and: Etruscans
Report of the Sixteenth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Stefania Michelucci Lawrence’s...
D. H. Lawrence and: Touch and Go
Report of the Fifteenth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group A Group Reading of Touch and Go ...
Veganism and Modernism
This post was written for the Vegan Society Researcher Network blog, where it may be found here. It appears...
D. H. Lawrence and: Extinction Rebellion
Report of the Fifteenth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Trevor Norris Lawrence's Nature and...
When does ‘Women in Love’ take place?
I recently contributed to a thread on the literary blog of Russian translator and biographer Patrick Miles,...
D.H. Lawrence: Sex, Exile and Greatness
I was interviewed about D.H. Lawrence for a 48-minute Sky Arts documentary (with Odyssey Television) about D.H....
D. H. Lawrence and: Animals
Report of the Fourteenth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Lara Feigel Encounters Between Humans and Animals...
Theodore Stephanides and ‘Lili Marlene’
In our cellar, amongst the papers of my husband's grandfather Theodore Stephanides, I came across two...
D. H. Lawrence and: Abruzzo
Report of the Thirteenth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Anthony Pacitto A Sense of Ancient Gods ...
A world tour in shop signs on the Kilburn High Road
For one of the English BA courses taught at my college, New College of the Humanities, I have for...
History’s warning against money printing – through stamps
Looking through my father's stamp collection, I found history's warning against money printing - a phenomenon...
A Response to Geoffrey Robertson QC on the Subject of the Magnitsky Act
On 26th October 2020 human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson addressed the Law Society of New College...
Review of Judith Ruderman’s D.H. Lawrence Birthday Lecture September 12th 2020
‘A life of illness and resilience: Reflections on Lawrence’s letters in a time of pandemic’ Saturday...
Myth, History, and the Idea of the Nation in Derek Walcott and V.S. Naipaul
The following article has been published in Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism: Vol. 20, No. 3, 2020...
The Book Launch of ‘The Edinburgh Companion to D. H. Lawrence and the Arts’ (2020)
Lawrencian sisters... co-editors Susan Reid and Catherine Brown INTRODUCTION On November 28th,...
D. H. Lawrence and: The Plumed Serpent
Report of the Twelfth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Terry Gifford The Plumed Serpent and Ecology...
D. H. Lawrence and: Rage
Report of the Eleventh Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group The D. H. Lawrence Memory Theatre: James...
D. H. Lawrence and the Sense of Scale
The following paper was delivered to the DH Lawrence Society in Eastwood on 14th October 2020. ...
D. H. Lawrence and: Sardinia
Report of the Tenth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Adam Lang Sea and Sardinia and the Spirit of...
Imperialism on Trial: 8th September 2020 ‘The Phone Hacking Scandal and the Case of Assange: a Comparison’
Tuesday 8th September 2020, 7.30-10.00 pm in St Pancras New Church, Euston Road, London, UK...
D. H. Lawrence and: Film
Report of the Ninth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Catherine Brown Lawrence's Short Stories...
The Ethics and Politics of ‘Killing Eve’
The following article was written for The Article and published on 21st May 2020; it may be read here....
D. H. Lawrence and: Illness
Report of the Eighth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Catherine Brown Lawrence, Illness, and...
D. H. Lawrence and: The Married Man
Report of the Seventh Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group The Married Man - A Play Reading ...
Free the Truth: 11th April 2020
Saturday 11th April 2020, 5.30-8.00 pm by Zoom (during the period of coronavirus lockdown). The event was...
Novels that Shaped Our World, BBC2
I was interviewed about Charles Dickens, George Eliot and D. H. Lawrence for two of the three hour-long...
Le procès de lady Chatterley: Orgasme et lutte des classes dans un jardin anglais, ARTE
I was interviewed about Lady Chatterley's Lover for a one-hour ARTE French documentary about the novel's...
Introduction to ‘The Edinburgh Companion to D. H. Lawrence and the Arts’
The following is the pre-edited version of the Introduction to The Edinburgh Companion to D. H. Lawrence and...
George Eliot as Prophet
The following article (which appears below in its pre-edited form) was written as a chapter for...
Imperialism on Trial: Free Julian Assange February 25th 2020
Tuesday 25th February 2020, 6.30-10.00 pm in St Pancras New Church, Euston Road, London, UK Organiser:...
D. H. Lawrence: Icon
The following is the pre-edited version of my chapter in The Edinburgh Companion to D. H. Lawrence and the...
Tea with ‘Jessie Chambers’
The following account is by Eve Leadbeater, a friend of my parents and me, who once met D. H. Lawrence's...
Introduction to 2019 edn of the Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies:
I co-edited Volume 5, Number 2 (December 2019) of the Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies with the...
Review of the International D. H. Lawrence Conference at the University of Nanterre April 2019
I was commissioned to write the following review of the 2019 D. H. Lawrence conference at the University...
International Jurists’ Letter in support of Julian Assange, February 2020
INTRODUCTION The following International Jurists’ letter to British authorities in support of Julian...
Free the Truth: Academics, Lawyers and Journalists speak out for Julian Assange, London, 3rd February 2020
Monday 3rd February 2020, 5.30-8.00 pm in St Pancras New Church, Euston Road, London, UK Organisers:...
D. H. Lawrence and: Locations
Report of the Sixth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Dudley Nichols Lawrencian Locations ...
D. H. Lawrence and: Belarus
Report of the Fifth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Marina Ragachevskaya Minsk State...
Response to Dominic Cummings on the subject of Oxbridge English graduates
The following is the full text of a letter published in edited form by The Evening Standard on 6th...
D. H. Lawrence and: Widowing
Report of the Fourth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd: A Play Reading...
White Angels: the Perversion of Good Impulses to Negative Ends
Epigraph: 'Since those years it has often been said by pacifists - as in a brave, lop-sided pamphlet which I...
Free The Truth: Academics and Journalists speak out for Julian Assange, London, 28th November 2019
Thursday 28th November, 2019, 5.50-8.30 pm in St Pancras New Church, Euston Road, London, UK ...
D. H. Lawrence and: Pan
Report of the Twenty-Seventh Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Maria Thanassa Sardonic Paganism: D. H....
Reflections on the People’s Vote March, October 19th, 2019
I marched yesterday for two reasons. First, because I consider a second referendum a democratically-necessary...
D. H. Lawrence and: Fashion
SECOND MEETING REPORT THE RED-TROUSERED PHILOSOPHER: D. H. LAWRENCE AND THE REVOLT INTO STYLE STEPHEN...
The Ethics of Torture and ‘Zero Dark Thirty’
Watch podcast This lecture, given in June 2015 at the How The Light Gets In (Institute of Arts and Ideas)...
Sex in Literature
Watch podcast. This lecture, given in June 2015 at the How The Light Gets In (Institute of Arts and Ideas)...
Abstracts for 14th International D.H. Lawrence Conference ‘London Calling: Lawrence & the Metropolis’
New College of the Humanities, London, U.K., 3rd– 8thJuly 2017 This conference, for which I was Executive...
D.H. Lawrence and the Avoidance of Darwinian Tragedy
The following is the pre-edited version of an article which has been published in Etudes...
D. H. Lawrence and: A Propos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Report of the Inaugural Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Hugh Stevens A Propos of Lady Chatterley's...
Review of ‘Mud and Stars’, a Russian Literary Travel Book by Sara Wheeler
MUD AND STARS: TRAVELS IN RUSSIA WITH PUSHKIN AND OTHER GENIUSES OF THE GOLDEN AGE Sara Wheeler....
Old and New Testament Ethics in Two Lloyd Webber Musicals
This article was written for thearticle.com. What follows is my pre-edited draft. The final article may be read...
Finding ‘God’ in DH Lawrence’s Poetry
The following talk was given in Eastwood, England, on Saturday 15th June 2019, at the third annual 'DH Lawrence...
‘The Character Assassination of Julian Assange’: Imperialism on Trial – Free Julian Assange, June 2019
Two events entitled 'Imperialism on Trial - Free Julian Assange' were held at the Crypt on the Green and St...
DH Lawrence in Paris in 1929
For the last three years, Robert Bullock – an English member of the DH Lawrence Society, who lives with his...
Fragile Peace in Derry, 2019
Yesterday evening a rally in Guildhall Square, Derry, marked the end of a three-day march by more than 160...
Visiting Tolstoy for his 190th Birthday
I have just reviewed Mud and Stars: Travels In Russia with Pushkin and Other Geniuses Of The Golden Age by Sara...
DH Lawrence and the Anticipation of a Vegan World
The following paper was given at the 33rd annual international DH Lawrence conference held at the University of...
Revisiting Tolstoy’s ‘On Shakespeare and on Drama’
This paper was given at an international conference on Lev Tolstoy hosted by Tula University on the occasion of...
The Torture Debate, ’24’, and ‘Zero Dark Thirty’
Versions of the following lecture were given annually as a lecture at New College of Humanities, on the Applied Ethics...
Describing the Unobserved: Literature and the World without Humans
This is the text of a talk that was given in February 2013 to the Ottoline Society – the academic discussion...
DH Lawrence and Brexit
The following talk was given at the British Council in Paris on Wednesday 22nd May 2019, on the occasion of the...
Imperialism on Trial: Free Julian Assange May 2019
Bloomsbury Baptist Church, London, Wednesday May 1st 2019, 7-10 pm, organised by Greg Sharkey I have...
The Hearing of Julian Assange on the Charge of Skipping Bail, 1st May 2019
Wednesday 1stMay 2019 Southwark Crown Court, London, before Judge Deborah Taylor, c. 10.40-11.40 am. ...
Literary Bad Sex
The following article was commissioned by IAI (Institute of Arts and Ideas), and published March 15th 2019; the...
Review of Geoff Dyer’s selection of DH Lawrence’s Essays ‘Life with a Capital L’
The following is a pre-edited version of a review which was published in Prospect magazine, March 15th, 2019. ...
Bernard Richards in conversation with Ian McEwan, 1992
Bernard Richards – Emeritus Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, who taught English at the College between 1972 and...
Bernard Richards in conversation with Derek Walcott, 1992
Bernard Richards - Emeritus Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, who taught English at the College between 1972 and...
On going vegan
The following was written as an open letter to be read out to an initial meeting of the 'Vegan Info and Social...
Review of ‘The Daughter-in-Law’, Arcola Theatre, London, January 2019
The following is a pre-edited version of a review which appears in DH Lawrence Review (the DH Lawrence Journal of...
Tribute to Tolstoy
I gave the following speech on the occasion of the 190th anniversary of Lev Tolstoy's birth, 9th September 2018, to a...
Review of ‘Kolyma Stories’, Varlam Shamalov
KOLYMA STORIES Translated and introduced by Donald Rayfield, New York: New York Review of Books, 2018, £14.99, 741 pp....
Radio 4 ‘Front Row’ Interview about DH Lawrence’s ‘The Daughter-in-Law’
BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Front Row'. Broadcast Wednesday January 16th 2019, 7.15 pm. Interviewed by presenter Samira...
Radio 4 ‘The Art of Intimacy’ interview
BBC Radio 4 programme 'The Art of Intimacy' (Part 1), in which novelist Eimear McBride considers how novelists across...
Review of ‘Teffi: A Life of Letters and of Laughter’
Teffi: A Life of Letters and of Laughter Edythe Haber £20 (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2018 UK, 2019 US), 288...
Ambiguous Words
I have decided to start a series of Tweets containing glosses on (to me) interestingly ambiguous words (mainly...
Athens Diary 2018
Over the last three months I have visited Athens three times. This is my retrospective diary of life and death....
‘The Young Russian’: D.H. Lawrence, London’s Russians, and the First World War
The following is the pre-edited text of an article in The Journal of D.H. Lawrence Studies Volume 5, Number 2...
Resisting Tragedy: A Report on the International D.H. Lawrence Conference, Paris, 2018
The opening of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) This report was written for the D.H. Lawrence Society Newsletter,...
Russian Actor Vassily Livanov MBE’s Open Letter to the People of Britain
I break my long silence on my blog (students...exam-marking) to reprint the text of the open letter to the British...
Lawrence, Dostoevsky, and the Last Temptation by Christ
The following article appeared in the December 2018 edition of Journal of DH Lawrence Studies, [Vol. 5, Number 1...
The Edinburgh Companion to D.H. Lawrence and the Arts
The Edinburgh Companion to D. H. Lawrence and the Arts was published in October 2020. It is part of the...
How is Studying English Transformational?
On 13.2.2018 a number of New College of the Humanities academics participated in a conference on the...
Lawrence’s Bloomsbury: Two Walking Tours
The walking tours for which the notes appear below were written by me and delivered during the...
‘The Merry-Go-Round’ and ‘The Night of the Zeppelins’
The following were my programme notes for the drama evening held as part of the 14th International D.H....
Are DH Lawrence’s ‘Pansies’ Poetry?
The following paper was delivered at a public colloquium on DH Lawrence's Poetry held at Eastwood,...
Screening ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ in 2015
The following was given as a paper at the 2015 D.H. Lawrence Conference at the University of Nanterre, Paris....
Lawrence, Darwin and Genre
The following was given as a paper at the 2018 D.H. Lawrence Conference at the University of Nanterre, Paris,...
World War II and Memory
This article was commissioned by the Institute of Arts and Ideas for their website IAI News. An edited and shortened...
D.H. Lawrence and London: A special edition of the Journal of D.H. Lawrence Studies (2019)
I was guest editor, with permanent editor of JDHLS Sue Reid, of articles developed from selected papers given...
Loveless
Dir. Andrei Zvyagintsev (1964-), Arte France Cinéma, Why Not Productions, released 13.5.2017, 128 minutes. To...
Loving Fictions: Why Do We Fall in Love with Fictional Characters?
This article was commissioned by an published on the website of IAI - the Institute of Arts and Ideas. It may...
‘And What Did You Do in the War, Vati?’ My German Family’s Second World War
In my post Reflections on the Death of an Aunt I mentioned an incident in which my aunt was nearly raped by an...
The Death of Stalin
The Death of Stalin, 2017, dir. Armando Iannucci, adapted by Iannucci, David Schneider and Ian Martin from the French...
Reflections on the Death of an Aunt
This morning my aunt died. This may only be of interest to those who knew her, but I would nonetheless...
In Memoriam Derek Walcott Part II: an Interview with Poet Jaya Savige
A Shade on the Sea Floor An Interview with Jaya Savige about Derek Walcott (1930-2017) by Dr. Catherine Brown Thursday...
In Memoriam Derek Walcott Part I: A Reminiscence of Meeting Him in 2001
It was 2001 and I was as footloose as I have ever been. Footlooser than I ever want to be again. I threw...
Carnivore: Dorian Gray Meets Trainspotting
Carnivore, Jonathan Lyon, HR, HarperCollins (London, 2017) The following review was published...
A Journey through China and Malaysia
Our summer holiday this year consisted of a week in Shanghai visiting a friend, followed by a week in Malaysia...
Lipstick on Your Collar: My Fascination for the Nineteen-Fifties
There are, I find, many advantages to being born relatively late for your generation. Your parents know pretty...
Where Anti-Trumpism is Getting it Wrong; or, My Enemy’s Enemy is Not Above Reproach; or, Ends Do Not Justify Means
It is with some trepidation that I blog for the first time about Donald Trump. It is partly because I...
Fakespeare makes good, apart from on Leveson: King Charles III
King Charles III, film, 90 minutes, broadcast BBC2 10th May 2017, director Rupert Goold, screenplay Mike...
Three Girls: A Magnificent Response to the Rochdale Child Abuse Ring
BBC 1 miniseries, 3 episodes of 60 minutes Screenwriter: Nicole Taylor Director: Philippa Lowthorpe Broadcast...
Anglo-Greek Arcadia and Me
The following article was published in the June 2017 issue of Standpoint magazine, and it may be read here. My...
Is there a distortion in the perception of Russian literature in the English-speaking cultures?
This was written in response to the title question as posed by The Question, an online forum on which experts...
Five Books by D.H. Lawrence
This is a transcript of a live interview made on 4th March 2017 with David Shackleton of FIVE BOOKS. Five...
D.H. Lawrence and Ivan Karamazov’s Grand Inquisitor’s Christ
This is the text of a lecture that I gave to the D.H. Lawrence Society at Moorgreen near Eastwood, UK, on 11th...
Review of ‘Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel’
This review appeared in Standpoint in December/January 2016/17 John Stubbs, Jonathan Swift: The...
Review of ‘The Theatre of D.H. Lawrence’ by James Moran
This review appeared in the Journal of D.H. Lawrence Studies, January 2017 The Theatre of D.H. Lawrence:...
Review of the Belknap Press ‘Annotated Wuthering Heights’
This review appeared in Essays in Criticism (2016) 66 (3): 383-389 The Annotated Wuthering Heights. Edited by Janet...
What is Good Sex Writing?
When Russians and Britons discuss literature – especially British fiction, especially if written since the Lady...
Fear on Camera: Papa Doc’s Haiti
I am rereading Graham Greene’s 1966 novel The Comedians, which I first read as an earnest fifteen-year-old...
Whistlejacket Forever
It’s called a levade, when horses rear in art. He’s an Arab, so it fits - from the land of rising suns....
Moscow: History of a Symbol
Russia doesn’t do towns. There are no Russian Granthams, Great Yarmouths, or Leighton Buzzards. Its...
Dog-Walking With the Dead
My dogs – the most lifeful things, insofar as life consists of bounding and grinning and...
Uncustomisable Orthodoxy
This summer I attended my first Orthodox funeral – in St Sophia’s Church, Moscow Road, Bayswater,...
The Euro-Debate’s Missing Factor: the USA
Barack Obama caused a stir in the UK's debate as to whether to leave the European Union by...
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
A little while ago I saw the Tricycle Cinema’s live broadcast of the Donmar Warehouse’s production of...
Rough Justice: ‘And Then There Were None’ & ‘An Inspector Calls’
Last autumn/winter BBC1 produced two great adaptations of mid-twentieth century British literary smash-hits....
Corfus of the Mind
Sources in order of recency: Conversation with my mother-in-law Alexia Mercouris née Stephanides...
Of Man and Dogs
I have recently read In Defence of Dogs (Penguin 2012, 324 pp.) by John Bradshaw, biologist and...
Teffi from Odessa to Paris
The following is a pre-edited version of a review published here in the May 2016 issue of The Literary Review. ...
An Orgy of Revenge in a Man’s World
Review of the Novel Maestra, by L.S. Hilton The review that appears below is a pre-edited version of an...
BBC 1 Lady Chatterley’s Lover
I was script consultant to Jed Mercurio in his adaptation for Lady Chatterley's Lover - 90 minutes aired on BBC1 on...
Some Things That Are True of My Dad
Both of my parents are saints, basically. But beyond that, they have their particularities. Especially my Dad....
Vasilii Perov and other Household Names we’ve never heard of
National Portrait Gallery, London, 17th March-26th June 2016 One of the good things about this very good...
Geoff Colman on Naturalistic Acting
Part way through this spring term Geoff Colman – Head of Acting at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama –...
On Being at Home on Easter Morning
Church-going time, Easter morning, 2016. I am at home, looking at a vase of daffodils and a giant...
Camille: And The Lost Diaries of Samuel Pepys
2016, 338 pp, Whitefox Publishing Last Tuesday a novel was launched in Carmelite Chambers. Trust its...
Stop Trident Demonstration
Marble Arch to Trafalgar Square, Saturday 27th February 2016 CND supported by the Stop the War Coalition ...
The Master Builder
23rd January – 19th March 2016 The Old Vic, directed by Matthew Warchus London has form with Ibsen’s...
SPECTRE
2015, 148 minutes, dir. Sam Mendes As a big fan of James Bond and a moderate fan of Daniel Craig, I was...
Two Ways of Seeing Things
Maya Plisetskaya in the 1974 Russian Anna Karenina ‘Видите ли, на одну и ту же вещь можно смотреть трагически и...
An Englishly-sunny War and Peace
Six episodes broadcast from 3.1.2016 onwards on BBC1, 6 hrs 30 in total Adapter Andrew Davies, Director Tom Harper...
Revisiting the Beaumont Road Estate one Decade on: ‘Re:Home’ at The Yard Theatre
Yard Theatre, Hackney Wick, 9th February – 5th March 2016 Director Cressida Brown This Millennium,...
Opportunity Missed at Tottenham Court Road Station; Capitalist Sublime at Centre Point
Like hundreds of other people, I spent 2015 as a Tottenham Court Road Station refugee. From January to...
Husbands and Sons: or, how D.H. Lawrence gets mashed-up in the National Theatre’s Mine But Emerges Alive and Kicking
Philip McGinley as Blackmore and Anne-Marie Duff as Lizzie Holroyd National Theatre: Dorfman, 21st October 2015...
Marriage a la Mode
This article was published by the December 2015 edition of Standpoint magazine here. What follows is a pre-edited...
Ten Things that I have Learned about Dog-Owning – and Listicles
Listicles resemble and are rightly mocked by their name – diminutive, patterned, noticeably lacking conceptual...
Cambridge Revisited
It’s a whole genre of experience, revisiting your university town after a gap of years. Last weekend I...
Reader, I married him
This article is a pre-edited version of an article published here in the October 2015 edition of Literary Review....
Whataboutism in the Gulag
A couple of Sundays ago I was in the Gulag. Or, to be accurate, in a memorial on the site of a former...
The Unintended Consequences of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’
This article was published in Standpoint magazine on 24th September 2015. What follows is a pre-edited draft. ...
On Script Consulting for BBC1’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover
This article was published in The Independent on Sunday 30th August 2015. The following is a pre-edited text. ...
Lines Written on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye
In late May Hay held its festival. I’ve always been sceptical of this event. Reflecting on it, I realise that...
Broadside Against Ageism
“My parting advice to graduates? Beware ageism. It’ll be starting right around now. The feeling...
The Prosecutor’s ‘Lady Chatterley’
To own a Penguin 1960 copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover is to own a piece of history - a copy of the book which...
The Saracen’s Head at Southwell
Recently my family and I visited Southwell. This pleasant North Nottinghamshire Cathedral town, stabilised into...
On Friendship
As today is the name’s day of a friend, I am reflecting on friendship. Friend is often betrayed when...
Howard Jacobson in Conversation
On 9th March 2015 Howard Jacobson, novelist, was interviewed by Jaya Savige, poet, at New College of the Humanities,...
Leveson Now – or at the latest in a year’s time…
This week I attended a Parliamentary Rally of Hacked Off, the campaign ‘for a free and accountable press’....
Twelfth Week Sextet
Written, produced, directed and acted by students of Bedfellows - the New College of the Humanities Drama Society -...
A View from the Bridge
Wyndham’s Theatre, West End, transferred from the Young Vic where it played in 2014; running until 11th April...
Banya No. 1
London has a banya. I stumbled across it in an advert, although it has apparently existed since 2013. On...
Victorians All Around Us
Watch podcast If you live in a British town or city, the Victorians will be all around you. To become aware of them...
Approaching the Victorians
Watch podcast We should be careful of generalising about 'the Victorians'. 1837-1901 was a huge period of vast...
The Narrator Part 2
Watch podcast In the second half of this short introduction to Narrators I consider some of the complexities that can...
The Narrator Part 1
Watch podcast. This is a brief introduction to the concept of the 'Narrator' in literature. In this first of its two...
Sex in Victorian Literature
Watch podcast The Victorians were not only caricatured as prudes by the modernists who followed them, but were known...
Review of Nabokov’s Letters to His Wife
Letters to Véra Vladimir Nabokov Edited and translated by Olga Voronina and Brian Boyd Penguin Classics, 2014, 798...
The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies
The title plays on Die Verlohrene Ehre von Katherina Blum (The Lost Honour of Katherina Blum), Heinrich Böll’s...
D.H. Lawrencians in Gargnano 2014
This article was published in the Newsletter of the D.H. Lawrence Society December 2014 ‘There is’,...
Why to – and how to – read Anna Karenina today
This article, of which an unedited version appears below, was published as ‘Our Love Affair with Anna Karenina’...
Lady Ottoline Morrell
A century and eight years ago, an aristocrat and her middle class husband moved into number 44 Bedford...
Review of ‘Behind the Mask: the Life of Vita Sackville-West’ by Matthew Dennison
Matthew Dennison, Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West, William Collins, 2014, 364 pp., £25 This...
Review of ‘Subtly Worded’ by Teffi
Teffi, Subtly Worded, Pushkin Press, 2014, 303 pp., £12 paperback Intro. Anne Marie Jackson. Translations by Anne...
Review of ‘The Kreutzer Sonata Variations’, trans. and ed. Michael R. Katz
Trans. and ed. Michael R. Katz, foreword by Ekaterina Tolstaya, afterword by Andrey Tolstoy Yale University...
Russia in Anglophone Twenty-First Century Fiction
This lecture was given at Rewley House, the Department of Continuing Education at the University of Oxford, on...
Review of ‘The Dog’ by Joseph O’Neill
Published by 4th Estate, 2014 This review appeared in the November 2014 edition Prospect magazine. The title...
Review of Rosamund Bartlett’s translation of ‘Anna Karenina’
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy, trans. Rosamund Bartlett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 847 pp, £18.99 [N.B....
Anglo-German Relations and D.H. Lawrence’s ‘All of Us’
D.H. LAWRENCE BIRTHDAY LECTURE 2014 Eastwood, 11th September, 2014 Dr. Catherine Brown I need to preface this...
Climbing Down the Alpine Pisgah: Lawrence and the Alps
N.B. This article, which appeared in the DH Lawrence Review of North America, is here in a pre-edited state, has some...
Review of CUP’s DH Lawrence Poems, and Richard Owen’s Lady Chatterley’s Villa
Below is the pre-edited version of a review which appeared in Literary Review, September 2014, pp. 8-10. The Poems:...
D.H. Lawrence and Women
Three women who loved Lawrence Dorothy Brett, Frieda Lawrence, Mabel Dodge Luhan 1938, New Mexico A couple of years...
Helen Bamber
Helen Bamber died two days ago. She was a founder member of Amnesty International, co-founder of The Medical...
‘Twelfth Night’ at New College of the Humanities
College plays serve many purposes. They train actors, illuminate drama to English students, develop friendships, and...
Deconstructing Russophobia
Imagine that Vladimir Putin were not a murderous autocrat and kleptocrat who has spent his fourteen years in power...
‘Broad range of GCSE literature choices are essential for a full education’
This Telegraph article responds to the furore surrounding the decision of various GCSE boards -...
Summits and Lovers: Retracing the Footsteps of DH Lawrence in the Alps
This Financial Times article describes my experience of filming 'Journey without Shame', a BBC2 Culture...
Mountains of the Mind: How Russian Writers Saw the Caucasus
This Financial Times article looks at the place of the Caucasus in the Russian cultural imagination over the...
Reading
Watch Podcast When we 'read' a book, a lecture, a situation, or a face, are we doing the same thing? How much do these...
Chapters
Watch Podcast Chapters are deep in the structure of most prose works, doing much of the supporting and some of the...
Unreliable Narrators
Watch Podcast Narrators are almost all we have to go on – so how can we know when they are being unreliable? This...
Sebastian Faulks’s ‘A Week in December’
Watch Podcast A Week in December takes the pulse of London in 2007. It describes a web of characters connected by...
Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 88’
Watch Podcast Shakespeare's 'Sonnet 88' is the first of a mini-sequence in which the poet anticipates his friend's...
A.D. Miller’s ‘Snowdrops’
Watch Podcast Snowdrops is a thriller set in Moscow in the early 2000s. The protagonist – an English lawyer - is...
Julian Barnes’s ‘A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters’
Watch Podcast Barnes's title is provocative; it announces that this is not in fact a history, but a novel. The novel...
Samuel Beckett’s ‘Breath’
Watch Podcast Beckett's thirty-five second play was sent on the back of a postcard to New York in 1969, where it was...
Ian McEwan’s ‘Atonement’
Watch Podcast Atonement is structured around a series of oppositions: war and peace, guilt and innocence, literature...
Pat Barker’s ‘Regeneration’
Watch Podcast Regeneration follows the efforts of a First World War psychiatric doctor to uncover the triggers of his...
Walcott and Naipaul: History and Myth
Listen to Podcast This lecture compares West Indian writers Derek Walcott and Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul on their...
Realism
Listen to Podcast This lecture tackles head-on the issue of what 'realism' is - or rather, how the term has been used...
George Eliot 1: Intellect and Consciousness
Listen to Podcast This lecture notes the power and range of Eliot's intellect, and her changing attitudes to the...
George Eliot 2: Genre and Justice
Listen to Podcast This lecture considers how narrative justice, and the genres of comedy and tragedy, relate to each...
George Eliot 3: Reception History
Listen to Podcast This lecture traces the reception of George Eliot from her own time to the present. It traces the...
George Eliot – A Very Large Brain
Watch Podcast This mini lecture explains why, to George Eliot, being truly intelligent entailed being moral, and vice...
D.H. Lawrence 1: Consciousness
Watch Podcast This lecture introduces one of the most important and vexed issues in D.H. Lawrence's thought and...
D.H. Lawrence 2: Humour
Watch Podcast D.H. Lawrence's detractors and fans alike have long treated him as an entirely serious - or would-be...
D.H. Lawrence 3: Christianity
Watch Podcast D.H. Lawrence was brought up in Congregationalism, and although he left a belief in the exclusive truth...
D.H. Lawrence 4: The World at Large
Watch Podcast D.H. Lawrence spent most of his life, after his elopement with Frieda Weekley, restlessly travelling the...
D.H. Lawrence 5: The Alps
Watch Podcast D.H. Lawrence first saw the Alps when he was eloping with his Professor's wife, Frieda Weekley. They...
D.H. Lawrence 6: Birds, Beasts and Children
Watch Podcast D.H. Lawrence described flowers and children better than any other writer I can think of. This lecture,...
D.H. Lawrence 7: Reception History
Watch Podcast D.H. Lawrence's reputation was much contested during his lifetime, and has fluctuated dramatically ever...
Unreliable Narrators
Watch Podcast This lecture considers one of the trickiest of literary devices to interpret and describe: the...
Chapters: Why Writers Have Them, and How To Read Them
Watch Podcast Why are nearly all long prose works divided into chapters? This lecture considers the uses of chapters...
Multiple Plotting
Watch Podcast What does it mean for a novel to be multi-plotted? Does not a novel has as many plots as characters? And...
Modernism in our Time
This review was published in Essays in Criticism, 60 (2010), 189-96, and appears here as a pre-edited version. Summary...
Lawrence’s ‘Women in Love’ on the Small Screen
This review was published in 'The D.H. Lawrence Newsletter' no. 89, Spring/Summer 2011, 12-18, and is made available...
Rosa Newmarch: Russophile and Poet
This review was published in Translation and Literature, No. 20: 3, 2011, 397-403, and is reproduced here in a...
D.H. Lawrence Homo Religiosus
This review was published in the Journal of the D.H. Lawrence Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2013), 179-188, and is...
‘Snowdrops’ and the English Expatriate in Russia
This informal paper concerning AD Miller's 2011 Booker-shortlisted novel set in Moscow in 2003 discusses the position...
‘The Art of Comparison: How Novels and Critics Compare’
The Art of Comparison: How Novels and Critics Compare (London: Legenda, 2011) Comparison underlies all...
‘Daniel Deronda’ as Tragi-Comedy
This article was published in Essays in Criticism 59 (2009), 302-323, and is presented here in a pre-edited version....
Why does Daniel Deronda’s Mother live in Russia?
This article was published in The George Eliot/George Henry Lewes Journal, 58-59 (September 2010), 26-42, and is...
War and Peace in Ian McEwan’s ‘Atonement’
This article was published in Footpath (a journal concerning English literature published in English and Russian in...
Scapegoating, Double-Plotting, and the Justice of ‘Anna Karenina’
This article was published in Modern Language Review, Vol .106: 1 Jan 2011, 179-194, and is presented here in a...
The Unconscious Good Life in ‘Anna Karenina’ and ‘Women in Love’
This article was published in Comparative Literature, Vol. 63:1, Winter 2011, 25-46, and is presented here in...
‘The Mill on the Floss’ in the Nineteen-Seventies
This article was published in The George Eliot Review, No. 42, 2011, 70-76, and is reproduced here in pre-edited form....
Commentaries on Shakespeare’s Sonnets 88-93
These articles are in pre-edited format, and are uploaded with the kind permission of the editors at Continuum. They...
The Russian Soul Englished
This version is pre-publication, and is uploaded with the kind permission of the editors at JML. It has been published...
What is ‘Comparative’ Literature?
This version is pre-editing; for the final version please see Comparative Critical Studies, Volume 10, No. 1, 2013,...
Henry James and Ivan Turgenev: Cosmopolitanism and Croquet
This article was published in Literary Imagination, Feb 22, 2013; doi: 10.1093/litimag/imt014 Cosmopolitanism and...
Paint, Pain, and Fiction: Beryl Bainbridge’s ‘Master Georgie’ and Michael Frayn’s ‘Headlong’
Paint, Pain, and Fiction This short paper compares how Beryl Bainbridge and Michael Frayn treat the relationship...
What is ‘Comparative Literature’?
Watch Podcast What is really meant by the phrase 'comparative literature'? How does it relate to comparative...
Journey Without Shame
This sixty minute BBC2 Culture Show special concerns D.H. Lawrence's 'honeymoon' journey with Frieda...
LAWRENCE: Scandalous! Censored! Banned!
This review was published in the 'Newsletter of the D.H. Lawrence Society', December 2013, and is reproduced by kind...
Howard Jacobson and Anti-Semitism
This lecture concentrates on Kalooki Nights, The Finkler Question, and Zoo Time by likening each to a Jewish Museum,...
The Alps in D.H. Lawrence’s Thought and Theology
This article appeared in the Journal of the D.H. Lawrence Society, Vol 3, No. 2, 2013, 57-84: this is a pre-edited...
‘The Reception of George Eliot in Europe’
The Reception of George Eliot in Europe (London and New York: Bloomsbury 2016) traces the history of reception of...
Victoriana in London 2013-14
The Invisible Woman (dir. Ralph Fiennes, 2013) The Dickens Museum (Doughty Street, London) The Midland...
Three Plays at New College of the Humanities 2013-14
Eugene Ionescu, The Bald Prima-Donna Harold Pinter, Betrayal Will Eno, Oh! the Humanity Drama got going...
Shunga in the City
Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art 3rd October 2013 – 5th January 2014 British Museum I have only twice felt...
‘Handbagged’ by Moira Buffini
Playwright Moira Buffini Dir. Indhu Rubasingham Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn Buffini got there first. She...
An Evening of Greek Culture
Last Saturday evening I went to a talk on the Parthenon Marbles. Aka in less-Greek or...
Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum
28th March - 29th September 2013 British Museum The focus of this exhibition is life rather than death....
The American Plan
2nd July - 10th August 2013 St James Theatre, London Theatre Royal Bath production Playwright Richard...
‘Chimerica’ by Lucy Kirkwood
Playwright Lucy Kirkwood (2012), director Lyndsey Turner Cast includes: Stephen Campbell Moore, Benedict Wong,...
Skyfall
Dir. Sam Mendes, 2012 ‘Skyfall.’ ‘Done.’ So I reflected yesterday evening as I left the cinema, having finally got...