One of the brilliant things about writers is the way many of them have tapped into the sentiments or imaginations not just of their own generation but of all generations since they were writing, and we may suppose for many generations to come. Every country can boast its favourite cartoon, its greatest villain its fondest…
Clothes Make Us
I have always loved the feel of new clothes, and I come from a mother who always washed clothes before allowing anyone to wear them. The interesting thing about the Adam and Eve story in the Bible is the fact they felt a sudden sense of nakedness and how they did not wish to be…
Mirror Mirror On The Wall
I am told we are wired up in our brains to be attracted to a particular kind of look which we will find ‘beautiful’. They have done a lot of work with symmetry and facial features to try to pin down what all the elements of beauty actually are but basically sex is facilitated by…
The Myopia Of Privilege
I often wonder when exactly the perverse ability of human beings to ignore another person’s suffering or to become blind to other people entirely, begins or arises? How the Roman gentry walked around their cities oblivious to the drudgery of slaves all around them, buying and selling human beings without a thought to anything but…
The Simplest Thing
I don’t think the wheel is a simple invention by any stretch of the imagination, in fact it is quite a piece of technology not only to think of it but to make, even the first stone versions, but placing a space between individual words is probably the simplest thing one could ever think of,…
The Fatal Fantasy
I once heard a description of human beings as the only animal that believes its myth about itself. This is a striking comment, some may even say, damming of the intellect of the human race but then the intellect of the human race has always been the intellect of the few. The human race is…
The Communist Agenda
It always surprises me when people say that Communism is dead. It’s as if they think political philosophies are created in mid-air with no reference points to human communities whatsoever. If nothing else we should always remember every political philosophy ever enunciated has been an answer to a real or perceived problem. So to know…
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ode to a Skylark Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert – That from Heaven or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest, Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and…
It Never Ends
Every time I open up my computer to work on a book, block or cover, I find there is something else I have to learn before I can accomplish what I want to achieve. To day the cover art has been altered for a book of fairy tales so I need to manipulate the back…
Know Thyself
I recall being very impressed by the two move circle my art teacher at school used to be able to draw and he taught that Giotto could draw a perfect circle though Giotto himself said anyone who could draw perfect circle must be mad. The talented Michelangelo thought that his sculptures were all already inside…