In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a new short history of literacy and reading by Belinda Jack For Rene Descartes, ‘Reading all the great books is like a conversation with the most honourable people of earlier centuries who were their authors’, while for John […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses a minor classic of Anglo-Saxon poetry It’s a sobering thought that all of the Anglo-Saxon poetry that has survived is found in just four manuscripts which escaped the ravages of time, the pillaging of the Vikings, and the […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reads a rare but revealing extended interview with one of fantasy fiction’s greatest writers When John Steinbeck was once asked how he went about writing, he replied, ‘With a pencil.’ Some writers are reluctant to give away too much […]