In this special guest blog post, Dr Mary Shannon writes about the remarkable London street where a number of noted Victorian journalists worked Last week, I turned a street corner near Oxford Circus and bumped into a friend from university who I had not seen in a good while. We […]
The origins of a classic children’s rhyme – analysed by Dr Oliver Tearle ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’: we all know these words that call back our early childhoods so vividly, yet where did they come from and what does this rhyme mean? It can be dangerous to […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle ‘Ring-a-Ring o’ Roses’ is a well-known nursery rhyme. But this intriguing little quatrain has attracted some surprising speculation and its origins are often erroneously attributed. What does this short rhyme mean? And where did it come from? What is this ring o’ roses and what is […]
Fun facts about the Christian writer 1. He was nearly shot in the head while on guard duty one night – but fortunately, another soldier had taken his place. This narrow brush with death helped to convince John Bunyan (1628-88) that he was one of the ‘Elect’ – the chosen […]
The interesting life of Henry Vaughan Henry Vaughan is associated with the seventeenth-century Metaphysical Poets, but his name is not as famous or familiar as, say, Andrew Marvell or John Donne. In this post we offer a very short biography of Henry Vaughan, providing a brief introduction to his life […]