In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the origins of a famous quotation – and its less famous source ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’ This line is often quoted, but it’s actually, technically, a misquotation. What’s more, the meaning of this aperçu is […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the meaning of a famous line from John Milton ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’ This line has the ring of the proverb about it, but rather than being some anonymous piece of hand-me down wisdom, […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the meaning of one of T. S. Eliot’s most famous statements about poetry ‘Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.’ […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the origins of a famous quotation from a classic work of Gothic literature Here’s a question for you. What is the name of the ‘monster’ in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein? a) Frankenstein b) He doesn’t have one […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the origins of a famous biblical quotation According to a story – which may well be apocryphal – Dorothy Parker was about to step through a doorway when another woman (in many versions of the anecdote, it’s the […]