‘Presentiment is that long Shadow on the Lawn’. Once again, as is so often the case with an Emily Dickinson poem, our attention is immediately arrested by a distinctive and provocative opening line. Something abstract, in this case the idea of presentiment, is given concrete form as an instantly visualised […]
On a well-known fairy tale ‘The Princess and the Pea’ is one of the shortest of the classic fairy tales. It also manages to be simultaneously one of the most straightforward and one of the most baffling. It’s straightforward because its plot is so simple, but it’s almost too simple. […]
‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ is one of the best-known nursery rhymes in English literature, but its words are so baffling and odd that it almost qualifies as nonsense literature. Whilst not quite up there with ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’ in the nonsense stakes, ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ is nevertheless […]