There isn’t a difference between a body and a daughter
It started with a white morning like a blind eyeball, the blankest of sleeps. And it started with sickness: Hanna wasn’t there. She was old, she was going deaf, and she wasn’t well enough to face the freezing mornings in the clothes bank, with the women who became desperate as they waited, who t
help for when the tide is out
Sometimes I forget that I can walk for hours – So unlike the long stupid steps, my crawl Under a desk or up the stairs or through the Door when drunk, a spilled coin of vodka Inflating itself on the bedroom carpet, piles Of laundry, crowded surfaces, weight of loose change – And if [&hell
Ghosts of Tradition: Past, Present, and Future
I’d never given much thought to tradition before. When I had, I saw it as somewhat redundant – rubbing shoulders with inflexibility, with conservatism – and I assumed that the people around me shared similar views. Tradition didn’t seem like something of particular importance to our
The True Cost of Porn: The Monopolisation of the Porn Industry
Open a private browsing tab. Turn on your VPN. Type ‘ethical porn’ into the search bar. Press enter. Try hardcore porn, softcore porn, or just porn. No, it’s not just your browsing habits. Every time it’s the same: Pornhub wins the race to the top of the page. The second, third, fourth (an
Frozen In Time: A Classicist’s Portrait of Interwar Oxford
In one of the more blatantly cliché moments of my life, I watched the 1981 TV adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s iconic Oxford interwar novel Brideshead Revisited. Notwithstanding the fact that Oxford only features in the first four episodes, it remains that for many of us, Brideshead played a part in
Variation on a Regicide
Enter SILVIO, wearing bloodstained crown, clutching dagger SILVIO: Well, it’s done, and my heart is sicker for it. The head that wears the crown rests uneasy, Or so said the king. He was wrong: mine rests not at all. If you can bear it, bear me to the stage, Where players dance and [
Plague Addiction
[CW: drug use] I have a complex relationship with Gower – that vindictive old man – late-medieval English poet, moralist, and reactionary. He is someone I would usually despise, not least because of his belief that the peasantry should be “bound in chains and under our foo