By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Until now, we’ve largely been concerned with selecting some of the best poems by famous poets – everyone from Shakespeare to Seamus Heaney, Coleridge to Carol Ann Duffy. But since Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, after literary critics […]
The greatest poems about music and singing selected by Dr Oliver Tearle Music and poetry were once natural bedfellows, with many ‘poems’ being sung to music for entertainment at feasts and royal courts, or in local taverns. If, as Walter Pater said, all art constantly aspires towards the condition of […]
A summary of the medieval Christmas carol ‘I sing of a maiden’ – or, to render it in its delightful original spelling, ‘I syng of a mayden’ – is one of the oldest surviving Christmas carols written in English. The words to this classic carol are included below, along with […]
Classic music inspired by classic books and writers Music has often taken inspiration from great literature, and 1980s music was no exception. The following eight songs were all written, at least in part, because of a classic book or a well-known writer. T’Pau, ‘China in Your Hand’. Carol Decker, lead […]
The following facts about T. S. Eliot’s life and work are designed as a quick ‘way in’ to discovering more about him. For those who’d like to learn more about Eliot’s life, we’d recommend Lyndall Gordon’s excellent biography, The Imperfect Life of T. S. Eliot. But in the meantime, we […]