The life of Ernest Hemingway, distilled into the best facts about his colourful but tragic life 1. As a young boy, Ernest Hemingway was dressed in girls’ clothing by his mother and referred to as ‘Ernestine’. We begin this selection of great Ernest Hemingway facts with a rather revealing nugget about his […]
The life of William Wordsworth told through some intriguing biographical facts William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth in the Lake District. He went to the same school, the Cockermouth Free School, as Fletcher Christian, the man who would lead the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789. […]
The life of Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton, told through five interesting pieces of trivia 1. While studying English at university, he caught out one of his professors. The precocious Crichton (1942-2008 – real first name John) began his writing career helping his classmates to write their school assignments. Later, while studying English […]
The funniest and wittiest quotes from Ambrose Bierce’s comic masterpiece, The Devil’s Dictionary We’ve read the whole of Ambrose Bierce’s wonderful The Devil’s Dictionary and, below, have distilled the book into 25 of the very best entries in this classic lexicon. The only stipulation we set ourselves was that the quotes we […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Cinderella’ is, of course, a classic fairy story, a ‘rags to riches’ tale about a kind-hearted girl who suffers various hardships only to marry the prince of the kingdom. Why is Cinderella called Cinderella? Since she is shunned by the rest of her family […]