EnglishReadings

A video from the summerhouse (instead of a podcast) - this brief extract is from The South Country by Edward Thomas (centenary edition of the volume issued by Little Toller Books in 2009).

For more on Edward Thomas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thomas_(poet)

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Edmund Spenser (1552 - 1559) is one of the greatest poets of the English Renaissance, best known for his epic, The Faerie Queene.

This recording is of sonnet LXXVII of Amoretti, a sequence published in 1595.

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https://youtu.be/6t7yalSdeyY

Image ℅ Wikipedia.

This paragraph is from Chapter12 "The Dolorous Blow", of A Glastonbury Romance, by John Cowper Powys.

Image c/o Wikipedia.

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B S Johnson (1933 - 1973) was a British experimental novelist, poet and film maker. This poem is take from his second collection, Poems Two, published by Trigram Press, London, on 1972.

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The first issue of The Spectator came out in 1711. Its opening article was by Joseph Addison.

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Image: c/o Wikimedia

"The Little Dancers" is a short poem by Laurence Binyon (1869 - 1943) who is better known for his WW1 poem, "For the Fallen" and "The Burning of the Leaves.

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Image by Strang c/o Wikipedia.

Microlecture copyright Michael Blackburn, 2019.

The short extract here comes from Arthur Koestler's memoir, Scum of the Earth, which recounts how he survived internment as a foreign national in France at the beginning the Second World War, escaped the Nazis and finally arrived in England, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Koestler had been a committed Communist and been imprisoned by the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War but had become disillusioned. The extract tells how the Communist internees in his camp reacted to the Soviet-Nazi pact and how they found ways of deceiving themselves about the truth.

Image c/o Wikipedia, Fair Use.

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This is a brief introduction to the poet, Brian Higgins (1930 - 1965). A recording of one of his poems is also available on this channel.

Higgins’s first collection, The Only Need, was published by Abelard-Schuman (New York - London - Toronto) in 1960, the second, Notes While Travelling, by Longmans (London) in 1964, and the final one (posthumously), The Northern Fiddler, by Methuen (London) in 1966. His death was ascribed to a ”rare heart condition”.

More on Higgins on Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Higgins_(poet)

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Given the increasing opposition to the idea and practice of free speech in western society, and most disturbingly in the universities, it is salutary to remember the words of J S Mill. This brief extract is taken from his famous essay On Liberty.

PIcture of J S Mill courtesy of Wikipedia.

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This extract is taken from Volume 2 (or The Second Partition, as it is called in the book) of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1651-2), section 6.

The Anatomy is a great disquisition on melancholy, which, in its more extreme forms, today we would term depression. In this brief extract Burton is examining how we can use reason to combat its effects.

Further information at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anatomy_of_Melancholy

Image is in the public domain, from the British Library https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/burtons-anatomy-of-melancholy-1628

Text for this extract: Everyman’s Library 887, Dent, London, 1968, ed. Holbrook Jackson.

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