Poets often concern themselves with abstract notions such as love and desire, but what about something as physical and tangible as the human body? Many poets have sung its praises over the centuries, pondering the link between the body and the soul, admiring the beauty of the human form, or […]
It was Henry James, a writer known for his prose writing rather than poetry, who once summed it up: ‘Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.’ Here are ten of the […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a new short history of literacy and reading by Belinda Jack For Rene Descartes, ‘Reading all the great books is like a conversation with the most honourable people of earlier centuries who were their authors’, while for John […]