weekly posts on literature, languages, and learning
"We translate more easily than we know our gratitude to God into our admiration of ourselves." Hugh Walpole’s 1922 novel The Cathedral is one of the best works of this, now sadly and unjustly neglected, author. Regular readers of the Grammaticus blog hopefully haven’t missed the December 2022 release of his short ghost story The …
Continue reading "Book review: ‘The Cathedral’ by Hugh Walpole"
Robert Seymour Bridges was a British poet and the Poet Laureate of the UK from 1913 to 1930. Originally a doctor, he had to abandon his medical practice due to poor health. He spent most of his life in rural Berkshire near Oxford, dedicated to writing and literary studies. Robert S. Bridges (1844–1930) The poem …
Continue reading "‘So sweet love seemed that April morn’ by Robert Bridges"
At the very beginning of this year’s Lenten season, we’re going to read a short poem by Christina Rossetti (1830–1894), the celebrated English poet and writer of devotional literature. Her two-part poem “Ash Wednesday” brings into focus the meaning of this important day in the church calendar. The poem is simple, but it's not exactly …
John Henry Newman was one of the intellectual giants of the Victorian era. Born in London in 1801, he led a long life filled with intellectual curiosity and deep concern with matters of faith. Originally an Anglican priest and theologian based in Oxford, he famously converted to Roman Catholicism in 1845, continuing his ministry as a …
Continue reading "Book review: “Loss and Gain” by John Henry Newman"
A while ago I posted a lengthy grammar article about the conditional sentences in English, and in this post we’ll read a poem by Rudyard Kipling that can be used to illustrate conditional clauses. It has some great vocabulary, too. (Not to mention lofty ideas!) Rudyard and John Kipling Titled “If—”, Kipling wrote this poem …
Last time we had a poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson here on the blog, it was his lovely short piece “The Owl”. In this post I’d like to present “Ring Out, Wild Bells”: it’s a classic New Year’s Eve poem, filled with good wishes and hopeful pleas. First published in 1850, it addresses everything from …
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The Weekend Listener is an eclectic weekly list of noteworthy podcasts and radio recordings, old and new, curated for your listening pleasure. Posts in this series are published on Fridays – please search the website for the previous instalments. LANGUAGE Speaking of Psychology: Why can some people speak dozens of languages? Photo by fauxels on …
Alfred Tennyson was a celebrated 19th century English poet whose life and work largely coincided with the reign of Queen Victoria. He was in many ways the embodiment of the Victorian literary tastes and widely recognised as Britain’s leading poet of the time, not the least through being honoured with the title of the Poet …
Man’s belief in survival of life after death is one of the oldest expressions of religiosity, firmly embedded in the very foundations of organised religion. Right from the prehistoric times humans have been keenly interested in what happens to the soul after the demise of the physical body, as evidenced by the earliest funerary rites. …
Continue reading "Book review: “Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances”"
Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories and novels featuring Sherlock Holmes contain a lot of little details about Victorian society, its culture, available technology and social conventions. As I was re-reading all the canonical stories earlier this year for the umpteenth time, my attention was inadvertently drawn to food, of all things. I found it interesting to …
Continue reading "Eat like Sherlock: food in Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories"
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