What does the word tantalise have to do with the chemical element tantalum? And what is the connection of both of these to the figure of Tantalus from Greek mythology? To answer these questions, we first need to know who Tantalus was, and what the precise details of the myth […]
The English writer Hector Hugh Munro (1870-1916), who is better known under his pen name Saki, was a master of the short comic story and, in some ways, a missing link between Oscar Wilde and P. G. Wodehouse. What’s more, Saki was that rare writer who could write humorously, for […]
‘The Fog Horn’ is a 1951 short story by Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), republished in 1953 as the opening story in his collection The Golden Apples of the Sun. The story, which is about a lighthouse whose foghorn emits a noise which attracts the attention of a primeval dinosaur living miles […]
The Bible contains many well-known stories, but how much do we know about them? And what are the best Bible stories everyone should know? Many people, even those raised in countries where Sunday school and religious assemblies are a mainstay of many children’s education, may find they’ve misremembered, or got […]
‘The Philosophy of Composition’ is an 1846 essay by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49). Although he wrote the essay in order to explain how he came to write his hugely successful poem ‘The Raven’, it has become a key non-fiction work – probably the key work – produced by Poe, and […]