In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the surprising origins of a well-known phrase Who coined the phrase ‘Lost Generation’? The term has become synonymous with the generation of American expatriates living in France after the First World War: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the meaning and origins of a famous Shakespeare phrase ‘Hoist with one’s own petard’. The expression is well-known, and its meaning is fairly clear to most people: it describes someone who has been scuppered by their own schemes, […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle examines a famous phrase derived from Shakespeare The old line about Hamlet, that it’s ‘too full of quotations’, wittily sums up the play’s influence on not just English literature but on the everyday language we use. Many of us […]