Really, at this stage Cameron should simply stop and say that the negotiations have not got where they need to for a conclusion to be reached. Some useful work, blah, blah. Time for everyone to go away and think and regroup. Oh and BTW there is another 18 months before the referendum need be held.
He's rushing for no good reason. This isn't about him. It's about the country. And he needs to do this properly.
TBH though do we really think the various EU nations and concerns for protecting their own best interests will have changed much in 18 months....all that will happen is basically no further progress and stalling would fill the extra time.
The reality is Cameron can't get anything significant now, nor in 18 months.
I personally think Cameron to have any chance of winning the referendum has to hold it this year. 2017 will be too late once the global sovereign bond crisis has really kicked off, so a delay would suit my interests fine. And as the AV referendum showed, it could easily develop into a referendum on the person proposing it if they become unpopular.
But I have to confess I've never heard of most of the other authors people have mentioned and have never read Pratchett.
"A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving is also good.
The 3 novels by JG Farrell: Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Hill Station are worth seeking out.
Perhaps we should now list those writers we think are overrated.
- Martin Amis - Salman Rushdie - Howard Jacobson - other than his first novel "Coming from Behind"(which made me laugh out loud on the tube) and his essays.
Dickens. Sorry. Turgid stuff. Jonathan Franzen. Boring. Zadie Smith. Boring and jejune. Virginia Woolf. A failed James Joyce Saul Bellow? I've never read him because I can't get beyond the first paragraph. The late works of Philip Roth. Boring.
I like Martin Amis. He can be laugh out loud funny, a very rare talent in a writer.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
To be fair to Woolf I like her "minor" works, e.g. Orlando, or a Room of One's Own, it's the serious important novels I dislike, To The Lighthouse etc.
Failed modernism.
I'd add Trollope and Sylvia Plath to the overrated authors list.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Plath's Ariel is maybe the greatest volume of poetry written by a woman, in English, in the 20th century.
Really, at this stage Cameron should simply stop and say that the negotiations have not got where they need to for a conclusion to be reached. Some useful work, blah, blah. Time for everyone to go away and think and regroup. Oh and BTW there is another 18 months before the referendum need be held.
He's rushing for no good reason. This isn't about him. It's about the country. And he needs to do this properly.
He's rushing because, migration.
It just feels horribly dishonest. Sneaky. Low. Beneath the Prime Minister we thought we liked and admired.
I'm going to try and leave my criticisms of Cameron at the door, now.
I want to help build as broad as possible a Tory coalition for Leave.
Really, at this stage Cameron should simply stop and say that the negotiations have not got where they need to for a conclusion to be reached. Some useful work, blah, blah. Time for everyone to go away and think and regroup. Oh and BTW there is another 18 months before the referendum need be held.
He's rushing for no good reason. This isn't about him. It's about the country. And he needs to do this properly.
He's rushing because, migration.
Still not a good enough reason. Getting the rules on finance is more important to the country.
If - and it is a big "if" - the sticking point is that the French want to impose Eurozone rules on us, then the PM needs to walk away and make it a clear issue: we are not in the euro. We are happy for those in the euro to integrate further as needed but in return we must not be made subject to their rules or the same rules because that is what an opt out from the euro means. Country X is seeking to impose this even though this is not necessary for the Eurozone. This is unacceptable. It is undermining our opt out and will have a cost for each and every one of us.
We'll keep going until we reach an agreement which gives the eurozone what they want and what we want without each of us interfering in the others' affairs.
He needs - both for domestic and European audiences - to define the issue which is causing the problems and not let it be defined by others.
But I have to confess I've never heard of most of the other authors people have mentioned and have never read Pratchett.
"A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving is also good.
The 3 novels by JG Farrell: Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Hill Station are worth seeking out.
Perhaps we should now list those writers we think are overrated.
- Martin Amis - Salman Rushdie - Howard Jacobson - other than his first novel "Coming from Behind"(which made me laugh out loud on the tube) and his essays.
Dickens. Sorry. Turgid stuff. Jonathan Franzen. Boring. Zadie Smith. Boring and jejune. Virginia Woolf. A failed James Joyce Saul Bellow? I've never read him because I can't get beyond the first paragraph. The late works of Philip Roth. Boring.
I like Martin Amis. He can be laugh out loud funny, a very rare talent in a writer.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
To be fair to Woolf I like her "minor" works, e.g. Orlando, or a Room of One's Own, it's the serious important novels I dislike, To The Lighthouse etc.
Failed modernism.
I'd add Trollope and Sylvia Plath to the overrated authors list.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Plath's Ariel is maybe the greatest volume of poetry written by a woman, in English, in the 20th century.
The Bell Jar is great too. The second best book on psychiatry that I know, to Dostoyevsky's The Double.
Really, at this stage Cameron should simply stop and say that the negotiations have not got where they need to for a conclusion to be reached. Some useful work, blah, blah. Time for everyone to go away and think and regroup. Oh and BTW there is another 18 months before the referendum need be held.
He's rushing for no good reason. This isn't about him. It's about the country. And he needs to do this properly.
He's rushing because, migration.
It just feels horribly dishonest. Sneaky. Low. Beneath the Prime Minister we thought we liked and admired.
I'm going to try and leave my criticisms of Cameron at the door, now.
I want to help build as broad as possible a Tory coalition for Leave.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
I'm of the 'Don't like Dickens' camp. I once tried to read Bleak House on holiday, on the grounds that it was supposed to be the best. Fortunately my bag was stolen on the beach so I didn't have to finish it.
Graham Greene at his best (Our Man in Havana, The Comedians) is superb. But some of his books are really quite boring.
Really, at this stage Cameron should simply stop and say that the negotiations have not got where they need to for a conclusion to be reached. Some useful work, blah, blah. Time for everyone to go away and think and regroup. Oh and BTW there is another 18 months before the referendum need be held.
He's rushing for no good reason. This isn't about him. It's about the country. And he needs to do this properly.
He's rushing because, migration.
It just feels horribly dishonest. Sneaky. Low. Beneath the Prime Minister we thought we liked and admired.
Actually the rushed nature of the referendum is justifiable in various ways, not least that this debate is very destabilising. Business needs to know whether we are IN or OUT.
I don't condemn Cameron for wanting it over and done with.
Of course, it's precisely that reason why business defaults to IN. They hate uncertainty.
I suspect a far smaller number have a problem with Brexit in principle.
The number of Tory mps backing leave doesn't matter as much as the number of labour ones.
There is no route to victory for leave that doesn't involve winning > 50% of the labour vote.
Yes there is. Apathy amongst REMAIN. If the pro-EU young and left simply don't turn out, then the older LEAVERS win.
Or just maths. Assuming things are as in 2015, Leave could win 50.5 tp 49.5 on 65% of Tories, 33% of Labours, 90% of UKIP, 25% of LDs, 20% of SNP, 20% of Greens, 70% of DUP, 20% of Plaid C, 40% of Sinn Fein, 50% of UUP, 10% of SDLP, 60% of TUSC, and 40% of Independents. And that's assuming the 250,000 who voted for another odd or sod are 100% Remain (unlikely!).
Differential turnout skewing old enthusiastic Leavers would just be gravy.
A someone with a plethora of techers in the family, my sympaties are totally with Mr ydoethur. However, isn't the legal aid fiasco the responsibility of his predecessor, Chris Grayling? IIRC Gove is making things if not right, at least less bad.
A Gove Conservative Party might make the next election competitive I have liked him on most of his policy briefs but he enemyises people quickly
Rubbish. Some teachers hated him because he was reforming a highly politicised profession with much of the year as holidays....
Parents think he is great.
There are more parents than teachers.
When I ask teachers I know why they hate Gove the answer is usually something along the lines of because the NUT told them he was a horrible person. God help the children taught by these people.
Quite. It startles me how many of my old school pals who were at best mediocre at certain subjects at school are now teaching them.
It also startles many teachers how many people criticise them for mediocrity when they are unable to control their own children and teach them lots of things that turn out to be wrong.
Incidentally, I am not suggesting that is the case for you, but the huge amount of patronising snobbery we get from people who are genuine mediocrities is one of the more frustrating things we have to put up with.
But I have to confess I've never heard of most of the other authors people have mentioned and have never read Pratchett.
"A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving is also good.
The 3 novels by JG Farrell: Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Hill Station are worth seeking out.
Perhaps we should now list those writers we think are overrated.
- Martin Amis - Salman Rushdie - Howard Jacobson - other than his first novel "Coming from Behind"(which made me laugh out loud on the tube) and his essays.
Dickens. Sorry. Turgid stuff. Jonathan Franzen. Boring. Zadie Smith. Boring and jejune. Virginia Woolf. A failed James Joyce Saul Bellow? I've never read him because I can't get beyond the first paragraph. The late works of Philip Roth. Boring.
I like Martin Amis. He can be laugh out loud funny, a very rare talent in a writer.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
To be fair to Woolf I like her "minor" works, e.g. Orlando, or a Room of One's Own, it's the serious important novels I dislike, To The Lighthouse etc.
Failed modernism.
I'd add Trollope and Sylvia Plath to the overrated authors list.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Really, at this stage Cameron should simply stop and say that the negotiations have not got where they need to for a conclusion to be reached. Some useful work, blah, blah. Time for everyone to go away and think and regroup. Oh and BTW there is another 18 months before the referendum need be held.
He's rushing for no good reason. This isn't about him. It's about the country. And he needs to do this properly.
TBH though do we really think the various EU nations and concerns for protecting their own best interests will have changed much in 18 months....all that will happen is basically no further progress and stalling would fill the extra time.
The reality is Cameron can't get anything significant now, nor in 18 months.
If that's the case, then he holds the referendum on the current basis. At least that would be better than doing it on the basis of a deal which is in some respects worse than the status quo.
And we would at least know that no real reform is possible. But rushing to push through a deal when everyone is tired just to avoid some pictures on the tele is beyond pathetic.
But I have to confess I've never heard of most of the other authors people have mentioned and have never read Pratchett.
"A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving is also good.
The 3 novels by JG Farrell: Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Hill Station are worth seeking out.
Perhaps we should now list those writers we think are overrated.
- Martin Amis - Salman Rushdie - Howard Jacobson - other than his first novel "Coming from Behind"(which made me laugh out loud on the tube) and his essays.
Dickens. Sorry. Turgid stuff. Jonathan Franzen. Boring. Zadie Smith. Boring and jejune. Virginia Woolf. A failed James Joyce Saul Bellow? I've never read him because I can't get beyond the first paragraph. The late works of Philip Roth. Boring.
I like Martin Amis. He can be laugh out loud funny, a very rare talent in a writer.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
To be fair to Woolf I like her "minor" works, e.g. Orlando, or a Room of One's Own, it's the serious important novels I dislike, To The Lighthouse etc.
Failed modernism.
I'd add Trollope and Sylvia Plath to the overrated authors list.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Plath's Ariel is maybe the greatest volume of poetry written by a woman, in English, in the 20th century.
LOL
Its unreadable crap bigged up by people trying to look intellectual and/or 'progressive'.
Does anyone know any of Plath's poems apart from the last paragraph of the one about her dad ?
Even the film they did of her has more from Birthday Letters than from her own work.
A someone with a plethora of techers in the family, my sympaties are totally with Mr ydoethur. However, isn't the legal aid fiasco the responsibility of his predecessor, Chris Grayling? IIRC Gove is making things if not right, at least less bad.
My understanding is that he had inherited a bad situation and turned it into a desperate one. However, I have very little time to take an interest in the intricacies of our collapsing legal system and what little I do know is at third hand. I'm willing to be corrected.
It would be nice to think Gove was not a complete failure at something. Everyone should have some successes. Even Gordon Brown was right about Zimbabwe. However, I compare Gove to Clarke - a politician of undoubted, even remarkable talent, whom people want to admire, but simply cannot because of his habit of rubbing people up the wrong way apparently for no better reason than to try and show his own brilliance in a clearer light.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
I'm of the 'Don't like Dickens' camp. I once tried to read Bleak House on holiday, on the grounds that it was supposed to be the best. Fortunately my bag was stolen on the beach so I didn't have to finish it.
Graham Greene at his best (Our Man in Havana, The Comedians) is superb. But some of his books are really quite boring.
There's nothing wrong with Dickens that cutting two-thirds of most novels, renaming the characters and resetting the times and locations can't solve.
If that's the case, then he holds the referendum on the current basis. At least that would be better than doing it on the basis of a deal which is in some respects worse than the status quo.
And we would at least know that no real reform is possible. But rushing to push through a deal when everyone is tired just to avoid some pictures on the tele is beyond pathetic.
But it will always be a rush. No-one concentrates or commits until they are up against a deadline. 'Twas ever so.
But I have to confess I've never heard of most of the other authors people have mentioned and have never read Pratchett.
"A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving is also good.
The 3 novels by JG Farrell: Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Hill Station are worth seeking out.
Perhaps we should now list those writers we think are overrated.
- Martin Amis - Salman Rushdie - Howard Jacobson - other than his first novel "Coming from Behind"(which made me laugh out loud on the tube) and his essays.
Dickens. Sorry. Turgid stuff. Jonathan Franzen. Boring. Zadie Smith. Boring and jejune. Virginia Woolf. A failed James Joyce Saul Bellow? I've never read him because I can't get beyond the first paragraph. The late works of Philip Roth. Boring.
I like Martin Amis. He can be laugh out loud funny, a very rare talent in a writer.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
To be fair to Woolf I like her "minor" works, e.g. Orlando, or a Room of One's Own, it's the serious important novels I dislike, To The Lighthouse etc.
Failed modernism.
I'd add Trollope and Sylvia Plath to the overrated authors list.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Plath's Ariel is maybe the greatest volume of poetry written by a woman, in English, in the 20th century.
The Bell Jar is great too. The second best book on psychiatry that I know, to Dostoyevsky's The Double.
i had to do the Bell Jar for A level, and thought it unreadable.
The number of Tory mps backing leave doesn't matter as much as the number of labour ones.
There is no route to victory for leave that doesn't involve winning > 50% of the labour vote.
Yes there is. Apathy amongst REMAIN. If the pro-EU young and left simply don't turn out, then the older LEAVERS win.
The oldies split for REMAIN in all the Ipsos-MORI phone polls
Mr. Smithson, before the last general election you told us that it was impossible for the Conservatives to get a majority unless they were ten point something ahead in the polls. You will forgive me if I no longer take your comments about the polls or the polls themselves seriously.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
I'm of the 'Don't like Dickens' camp. I once tried to read Bleak House on holiday, on the grounds that it was supposed to be the best. Fortunately my bag was stolen on the beach so I didn't have to finish it.
Graham Greene at his best (Our Man in Havana, The Comedians) is superb. But some of his books are really quite boring.
I'm with you.
My favourite books are the Fleming novels, Frederick Forsyth - the Fourth Protocol, Max Hastings' military histories (Overlord being my favourite), political biographies (I love Seldon in general, and Charles Moore on Thatcher) and socio-economic histories of the 17th and 18th Centuries. I also am a bit of railway enthusiast and love railway histories on closed lines.
I'm not a big novel person, really, but I really like William Golding - The Inheritors (my favourite) and Lord of The Flies. And Orwell's Animal Farm, of course.
I'm also a bit of a wonk. I love policy books by think-tanks like Reform, Policy Exchange and Civitas.
There's nothing wrong with Dickens that cutting two-thirds of most novels, renaming the characters and resetting the times and locations can't solve.
Dickens in small quantities is very good, especially read out loud by a good actor. I do understand why people like him, because the language and situations are vivid.
But I have to confess I've never heard of most of the other authors people have mentioned and have never read Pratchett.
"A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving is also good.
The 3 novels by JG Farrell: Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Hill Station are worth seeking out.
Perhaps we should now list those writers we think are overrated.
- Martin Amis - Salman Rushdie - Howard Jacobson - other than his first novel "Coming from Behind"(which made me laugh out loud on the tube) and his essays.
Dickens. Sorry. Turgid stuff. Jonathan Franzen. Boring. Zadie Smith. Boring and jejune. Virginia Woolf. A failed James Joyce Saul Bellow? I've never read him because I can't get beyond the first paragraph. The late works of Philip Roth. Boring.
I like Martin Amis. He can be laugh out loud funny, a very rare talent in a writer.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
To be fair to Woolf I like her "minor" works, e.g. Orlando, or a Room of One's Own, it's the serious important novels I dislike, To The Lighthouse etc.
Failed modernism.
I'd add Trollope and Sylvia Plath to the overrated authors list.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Wrong way round.
That's right Ted Hughes was appointed Poet Laureate because he was a nobody whose wife had died twenty years before.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
I'm of the 'Don't like Dickens' camp. I once tried to read Bleak House on holiday, on the grounds that it was supposed to be the best. Fortunately my bag was stolen on the beach so I didn't have to finish it.
Graham Greene at his best (Our Man in Havana, The Comedians) is superb. But some of his books are really quite boring.
I'll cut to the only important discussion taking place.
Favourite novels: Coming Up For Air To Kill A Mockingbird Bleak House The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd The Book Of Illusions The Affirmation The Good Soldier Svejk The Castle
I'd also like Cousin Phyllis, but since it's only 70 pages long, that might be cheating.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Don't be silly.
...Here is a hand To fill it and willing To bring teacups and roll away headaches And do whatever you tell it. Will you marry it? It is guaranteed...
...To thumb shut your eyes at the end And dissolve of sorrow. We make new stock from the salt. I notice you are stark naked. How about this suit...
...Black and stiff, but not a bad fit. Will you marry it? It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof Against fire and bombs through the roof. Believe me, they'll bury you in it...
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
I'm of the 'Don't like Dickens' camp. I once tried to read Bleak House on holiday, on the grounds that it was supposed to be the best. Fortunately my bag was stolen on the beach so I didn't have to finish it.
Graham Greene at his best (Our Man in Havana, The Comedians) is superb. But some of his books are really quite boring.
There's nothing wrong with Dickens that cutting two-thirds of most novels, renaming the characters and resetting the times and locations can't solve.
I am irresistibly reminded of that wonderful gibe from Martin Johnson in 1986:
'There are only three things wrong with this England side. They can't bat, they can't bowl and they can't field.'
Main impact of Gove is not on direct contribution of the man, but on breaking social taboo. For decades being pro-Brexit has been dismissed in polite society as something for far right and far left. But now a major pro-gay marriage, pro-criminal rehabilitation Cameroon has come out and made it acceptable. And plenty of mainstream MPs will likely follow. Its not a position to be dismissed at dinner parties any longer.
My favourite books are the Fleming novels, Frederick Forsyth - the Fourth Protocol, Max Hastings' military histories (Overlord being my favourite), political biographies (I love Seldon in general, and Charles Moore on Thatcher) and socio-economic histories of the 17th and 18th Centuries. I also am a bit of railway enthusiast and love railway histories on closed lines.
I'm not a big novel person, really, but I really like William Golding - The Inheritors (my favourite) and Lord of The Flies. And Orwell's Animal Farm, of course.
I'm also a bit of a wonk. I love policy books by think-tanks like Reform, Policy Exchange and Civitas.
I am a big-novel fan. Jane Austen of course. George Eliot. Some Henry James. And the great French novelists - Zola, Stendhal, Balzac. And the Russian heavies. But not Dickens.
But I have to confess I've never heard of most of the other authors people have mentioned and have never read Pratchett.
"A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving is also good.
The 3 novels by JG Farrell: Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Hill Station are worth seeking out.
Perhaps we should now list those writers we think are overrated.
- Martin Amis - Salman Rushdie - Howard Jacobson - other than his first novel "Coming from Behind"(which made me laugh out loud on the tube) and his essays.
Dickens. Sorry. Turgid stuff. Jonathan Franzen. Boring. Zadie Smith. Boring and jejune. Virginia Woolf. A failed James Joyce Saul Bellow? I've never read him because I can't get beyond the first paragraph. The late works of Philip Roth. Boring.
I like Martin Amis. He can be laugh out loud funny, a very rare talent in a writer.
Dickens - he gets his place in the canon just for a Christmas Carol. I took my kids to the adaptation at the Rose theatre and it was probably the best part of this Christmas.
Agree the next three but you should give Bellow and esp late Roth another go. Try Everyman. Speaks to men of a certain age. And the Human Stain was there about college PC intolerence, when was it, 15, 20 years ago?
A Gove Conservative Party might make the next election competitive I have liked him on most of his policy briefs but he enemyises people quickly
Rubbish. Some teachers hated him because he was reforming a highly politicised profession with much of the year as holidays....
Parents think he is great.
There are more parents than teachers.
Eh, sadly, no. He has some of the worst popularity ratings in the Cabinet.
Presumably amongst YouGov panel members?
Amongst the actual public, especially the Tory voting public, he is popular.
He has also been a fantastic Justice secretary.
And before that he was a fantastic Education Secretary - to the point that the Blob thought they had won even though the reforms all went through!
The problem is Sandpit that they haven't gone through yet. GCSE reforms are due to be implemented this autumn. As yet, the Maths GCSE is not ready, and there seems a very real chance that it cannot be launched in time (realistically, there are about 2-3 weeks left to do it). If it is not ready, it is hard to see how the others can go ahead.
In my mind the major reform was allowing schools to be run by head teachers, rather than by local authorities and teaching unions, allowing good schools to expand and poor schools to fail.
I genuinely don't know about the maths GCSE issues, where is the hold up in implementation? Hope things manage to get sorted out in time.
A someone with a plethora of techers in the family, my sympaties are totally with Mr ydoethur. However, isn't the legal aid fiasco the responsibility of his predecessor, Chris Grayling? IIRC Gove is making things if not right, at least less bad.
Quite. Revising the policies of the really rather incompetent Grayling is different to major change. As to changing the approach to imprisonment from retribution to restorative, from prison works etc, if is a case if I'll believe it when I see it.
But I have to confess I've never heard of most of the other authors people have mentioned and have never read Pratchett.
"A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving is also good.
The 3 novels by JG Farrell: Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Hill Station are worth seeking out.
Perhaps we should now list those writers we think are overrated.
- Martin Amis - Salman Rushdie - Howard Jacobson - other than his first novel "Coming from Behind"(which made me laugh out loud on the tube) and his essays.
Dickens. Sorry. Turgid stuff. Jonathan Franzen. Boring. Zadie Smith. Boring and jejune. Virginia Woolf. A failed James Joyce Saul Bellow? I've never read him because I can't get beyond the first paragraph. The late works of Philip Roth. Boring.
I like Martin Amis. He can be laugh out loud funny, a very rare talent in a writer.
Dickens - he gets his place in the canon just for a Christmas Carol. I took my kids to the adaptation at the Rose theatre and it was probably the best part of this Christmas.
Agree the next three but you should give Bellow and esp late Roth another go. Try Everyman. Speaks to men of a certain age. And the Human Stain was there about college PC intolerence, when was it, 15, 20 years ago?
The Human Stain has one of the finest pieces of writing in the English language (the scene in the Chinese restaurant). I dream of being able to take a reader through such a range of emotions in such a short passage.
Also both of those things might or might not be proxy measures for age. Older people more likely to be working class and more likely to have left full-time education at an earlier age.
Main impact of Gove is not on direct contribution of the man, but on breaking social taboo. For decades being pro-Brexit has been dismissed in polite society as something for far right and far left. But now a major pro-gay marriage, pro-criminal rehabilitation Cameroon has come out and made it acceptable. And plenty of mainstream MPs will likely follow. Its not a position to be dismissed at dinner parties any longer.
What's this obsession about dinner parties? From where does it originate Everyone has reckoned that Outers include many Conservatives, hardly far right, stop feeling so sorry for yourself, you should be happy with your poll figures
Matthew Goodwin is a good academic, but he clearly has little sympathy for such views: I do sometimes wonder if he's just pushing the line that anyone who supports Brexit and UKIP is just a bit of an uneducated idiot.
The era of the Lawson Boom, yuppies with red braces, Loadsamoney and the triumph of Thatcherism bought only half the amount of things that the misery starved austerity wasteland of today does.
Now I wonder how we 'pay' for all these things we buy.
My favourite books are the Fleming novels, Frederick Forsyth - the Fourth Protocol, Max Hastings' military histories (Overlord being my favourite), political biographies (I love Seldon in general, and Charles Moore on Thatcher) and socio-economic histories of the 17th and 18th Centuries. I also am a bit of railway enthusiast and love railway histories on closed lines.
I'm not a big novel person, really, but I really like William Golding - The Inheritors (my favourite) and Lord of The Flies. And Orwell's Animal Farm, of course.
I'm also a bit of a wonk. I love policy books by think-tanks like Reform, Policy Exchange and Civitas.
I am a big-novel fan. Jane Austen of course. George Eliot. Some Henry James. And the great French novelists - Zola, Stendhal, Balzac. And the Russian heavies. But not Dickens.
Yeah, not really a big novel fan. I feel that if i'm going to read something, and invest the time, I should learn something from it.
I've bought it, but still have the Ice Twins on the shelf. Sorry SeanT!
My favourite books are the Fleming novels, Frederick Forsyth - the Fourth Protocol, Max Hastings' military histories (Overlord being my favourite), political biographies (I love Seldon in general, and Charles Moore on Thatcher) and socio-economic histories of the 17th and 18th Centuries. I also am a bit of railway enthusiast and love railway histories on closed lines.
I'm not a big novel person, really, but I really like William Golding - The Inheritors (my favourite) and Lord of The Flies. And Orwell's Animal Farm, of course.
I'm also a bit of a wonk. I love policy books by think-tanks like Reform, Policy Exchange and Civitas.
I am a big-novel fan. Jane Austen of course. George Eliot. Some Henry James. And the great French novelists - Zola, Stendhal, Balzac. And the Russian heavies. But not Dickens.
If that's the case, then he holds the referendum on the current basis. At least that would be better than doing it on the basis of a deal which is in some respects worse than the status quo.
And we would at least know that no real reform is possible. But rushing to push through a deal when everyone is tired just to avoid some pictures on the tele is beyond pathetic.
But it will always be a rush. No-one concentrates or commits until they are up against a deadline. 'Twas ever so.
There's a difference between a deadline and negotiating something important when you've had no sleep for 40 hours or whatever. That's just pointless machismo. Sometimes you need a bit of space and time. What may seem very important at 3:30 am may not be whereas something minor and just a tidying up gets properly understood and turns out to be more significant.
I share your (Philip T) view that Cameron for Leave is possible. In fact I was looking around earlier to find an opportunity to back such an outcome. I'd have wanted at least 250-1 mind you.
I don't think Cameron is this deep, but it would be a blinding long game to have put himself where he is and now come out for "Leave".
Matthew Goodwin is a good academic, but he clearly has little sympathy for such views: I do sometimes wonder if he's just pushing the line that anyone who supports Brexit and UKIP is just a bit of an uneducated idiot.
A lot of older professional people got their higher qualifications while working, rather than going to university.
If Gove does come out, so to speak, it will be yet another episode in his honourable career of trying not to be a janus-type politician.
I doubt it will do him any good and as has been much rehearsed, he ain't going to be PM any time soon but dear god we need politicians like him.
Perhaps the PM, through gritted teeth, or perhaps HMQ herself could reach into the tightly locked box of hereditary peerages and make him a viscount or something. Just to go to the Lords as a life peer Lord Gove of Integrity would seem woefully inadequate.
You might be having a rogerdamus moment there. If Gove did lead Leave to victory then he would be a shoe-in for next PM. He is hardly less attractive to the great unwashed than Osborne.
Dickens. Sorry. Turgid stuff. Jonathan Franzen. Boring. Zadie Smith. Boring and jejune. Virginia Woolf. A failed James Joyce Saul Bellow? I've never read him because I can't get beyond the first paragraph. The late works of Philip Roth. Boring.
I like Martin Amis. He can be laugh out loud funny, a very rare talent in a writer.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
To be fair to Woolf I like her "minor" works, e.g. Orlando, or a Room of One's Own, it's the serious important novels I dislike, To The Lighthouse etc.
Failed modernism.
I'd add Trollope and Sylvia Plath to the overrated authors list.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Plath's Ariel is maybe the greatest volume of poetry written by a woman, in English, in the 20th century.
LOL
Its unreadable crap bigged up by people trying to look intellectual and/or 'progressive'.
Does anyone know any of Plath's poems apart from the last paragraph of the one about her dad ?
Even the film they did of her has more from Birthday Letters than from her own work.
I can quote from at least half a dozen Plath poems, in Ariel.
You're Lady Lazarus Moon in the Yew Tree Daddy Edge Balloons
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent, One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty. She has folded
Them back into her body as petals Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about, Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.
Plath wrote that about three days before she killed herself, as her two children slept upstairs. Brrr.
Ted Hughes was a minor poet in comparison. Which is ironic, as she always felt overshadowed by him.
I prefer Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney. I found the Bell Jar unreadable.
Dickens. Sorry. Turgid stuff. Jonathan Franzen. Boring. Zadie Smith. Boring and jejune. Virginia Woolf. A failed James Joyce Saul Bellow? I've never read him because I can't get beyond the first paragraph. The late works of Philip Roth. Boring.
I like Martin Amis. He can be laugh out loud funny, a very rare talent in a writer.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
To be fair to Woolf I like her "minor" works, e.g. Orlando, or a Room of One's Own, it's the serious important novels I dislike, To The Lighthouse etc.
Failed modernism.
I'd add Trollope and Sylvia Plath to the overrated authors list.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Plath's Ariel is maybe the greatest volume of poetry written by a woman, in English, in the 20th century.
LOL
Its unreadable crap bigged up by people trying to look intellectual and/or 'progressive'.
Does anyone know any of Plath's poems apart from the last paragraph of the one about her dad ?
Even the film they did of her has more from Birthday Letters than from her own work.
I can quote from at least half a dozen Plath poems, in Ariel.
You're Lady Lazarus Moon in the Yew Tree Daddy Edge Balloons
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent, One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty. She has folded
Them back into her body as petals Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about, Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.
Plath wrote that about three days before she killed herself, as her two children slept upstairs. Brrr.
Ted Hughes was a minor poet in comparison. Which is ironic, as she always felt overshadowed by him.
You're more predictable than Pavlov's dog.
Still its amusing to flush out the intellectually pretentious.
In my mind the major reform was allowing schools to be run by head teachers, rather than by local authorities and teaching unions, allowing good schools to expand and poor schools to fail.
That would be a great reform, Sandpit. I am a great believer that staff are responsible to the Head, who answers to the governors, who are elected by the parents. Unfortunately it hasn't happened. Academy trusts often end up being considerably more controlling than the old LEAs were, and often are even more remote. One school I used to work in doesn't have a head any more, since the last LEA appointed head retired - they were put into a Multi Academy Trust (MAT) and they share an executive head with three other schools. Guess which model worked better. (What's worrying is that it didn't work well anyway.)
It could well be a poisonous legacy of Gove that there is more centralisation, not less. If it were me, I would abolish horizontal trusts, and only allow groups of schools to group together vertically (i.e. primary through sixth form) in small areas. And I would further abolish the DfES, so nobody can meddle with them from Whitehall however well-intentioned, and make a much greater effort to get parents involved in the running of the school. But none of that is happening and it's further away than it was under Major with grant-maintained schools.
I genuinely don't know about the maths GCSE issues, where is the hold up in implementation? Hope things manage to get sorted out in time.
To cut a long story short, three drafts have been put forward and rejected by OFQUAL on the basis that incorporating elements from what is currently Further Maths at A-level was not enough to make them rigorous. Unfortunately, it is not likely that anything more advanced will be in any way comprehensible to fourteen year old children unless they are remarkable prodigies, which most of them are not. At the moment, therefore, there are no textbooks or other resources for next year and we are fast running out of time to prepare them.
History has just been sent through, although I think OCR's School's History Project specification should actually have been sent back for redrafting as there are some major flaws in it (which is why I have advised the Head of my school to switch boards to AQA). RE has not, but as nobody is suggesting any changes to OFQUAL's minimum (which is about a full subject anyway) that's not likely to be a problem. Geography is still caught in a logjam. Not sure about English - I know there was a hiccup but I think it has been sorted.
The really exasperating thing is that I like these qualifications much more than the current ones, but taking twelve months more to get them right rather than panicking about them not being ready in time would not do any harm.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Don't be silly.
...Here is a hand To fill it and willing To bring teacups and roll away headaches And do whatever you tell it. Will you marry it? It is guaranteed...
...To thumb shut your eyes at the end And dissolve of sorrow. We make new stock from the salt. I notice you are stark naked. How about this suit...
...Black and stiff, but not a bad fit. Will you marry it? It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof Against fire and bombs through the roof. Believe me, they'll bury you in it...
And let's not forget the absolute incantatory, spellbinding brilliance of Daddy
I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I’m finally through.
Chills me every time I read it, even now, and I've read it 700 times.
Her and Stevie Smith ("Not waving but drowning"...yes, I know, unoriginal) are the only two female poets I quote with any regularity. Since I don't quote that many of any gender, this is actually quite a big thing. She's not my favorite, but she is the one who hits you with an axe.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
To be fair to Woolf I like her "minor" works, e.g. Orlando, or a Room of One's Own, it's the serious important novels I dislike, To The Lighthouse etc.
Failed modernism.
I'd add Trollope and Sylvia Plath to the overrated authors list.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Plath's Ariel is maybe the greatest volume of poetry written by a woman, in English, in the 20th century.
LOL
Its unreadable crap bigged up by people trying to look intellectual and/or 'progressive'.
Does anyone know any of Plath's poems apart from the last paragraph of the one about her dad ?
Even the film they did of her has more from Birthday Letters than from her own work.
I can quote from at least half a dozen Plath poems, in Ariel.
You're Lady Lazarus Moon in the Yew Tree Daddy Edge Balloons
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent, One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty. She has folded
Them back into her body as petals Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about, Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.
Plath wrote that about three days before she killed herself, as her two children slept upstairs. Brrr.
Ted Hughes was a minor poet in comparison. Which is ironic, as she always felt overshadowed by him.
I prefer Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney. I found the Bell Jar unreadable.
My favourite books are the Fleming novels, Frederick Forsyth - the Fourth Protocol, Max Hastings' military histories (Overlord being my favourite), political biographies (I love Seldon in general, and Charles Moore on Thatcher) and socio-economic histories of the 17th and 18th Centuries. I also am a bit of railway enthusiast and love railway histories on closed lines.
I'm not a big novel person, really, but I really like William Golding - The Inheritors (my favourite) and Lord of The Flies. And Orwell's Animal Farm, of course.
I'm also a bit of a wonk. I love policy books by think-tanks like Reform, Policy Exchange and Civitas.
I am a big-novel fan. Jane Austen of course. George Eliot. Some Henry James. And the great French novelists - Zola, Stendhal, Balzac. And the Russian heavies. But not Dickens.
Yeah, not really a big novel fan. I feel that if i'm going to read something, and invest the time, I should learn something from it.
I've bought it, but still have the Ice Twins on the shelf. Sorry SeanT!
lol. Don't worry, I'm exactly the same. I never read novels now (though I read a zillion as a young man). I feel life is too short for fiction, I want facts. And if I want drama I go to the TV.
It's a gag and a cliche but it contains a truth: men over 40 only read military history.
But I have to confess I've never heard of most of the other authors people have mentioned and have never read Pratchett.
"A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving is also good.
The 3 novels by JG Farrell: Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Hill Station are worth seeking out.
Perhaps we should now list those writers we think are overrated.
- Martin Amis - Salman Rushdie - Howard Jacobson - other than his first novel "Coming from Behind"(which made me laugh out loud on the tube) and his essays.
Dickens. Sorry. Turgid stuff. Jonathan Franzen. Boring. Zadie Smith. Boring and jejune. Virginia Woolf. A failed James Joyce Saul Bellow? I've never read him because I can't get beyond the first paragraph. The late works of Philip Roth. Boring.
I like Martin Amis. He can be laugh out loud funny, a very rare talent in a writer.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
To be fair to Woolf I like her "minor" works, e.g. Orlando, or a Room of One's Own, it's the serious important novels I dislike, To The Lighthouse etc.
Failed modernism.
I'd add Trollope and Sylvia Plath to the overrated authors list.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Plath's Ariel is maybe the greatest volume of poetry written by a woman, in English, in the 20th century.
The Bell Jar is great too. The second best book on psychiatry that I know, to Dostoyevsky's The Double.
i had to do the Bell Jar for A level, and thought it unreadable.
Her one published venture into prose. Her poetry is terrific.
My favourite books are the Fleming novels, Frederick Forsyth - the Fourth Protocol, Max Hastings' military histories (Overlord being my favourite), political biographies (I love Seldon in general, and Charles Moore on Thatcher) and socio-economic histories of the 17th and 18th Centuries. I also am a bit of railway enthusiast and love railway histories on closed lines.
I'm not a big novel person, really, but I really like William Golding - The Inheritors (my favourite) and Lord of The Flies. And Orwell's Animal Farm, of course.
I'm also a bit of a wonk. I love policy books by think-tanks like Reform, Policy Exchange and Civitas.
I am a big-novel fan. Jane Austen of course. George Eliot. Some Henry James. And the great French novelists - Zola, Stendhal, Balzac. And the Russian heavies. But not Dickens.
Yeah, not really a big novel fan. I feel that if i'm going to read something, and invest the time, I should learn something from it.
I've bought it, but still have the Ice Twins on the shelf. Sorry SeanT!
Well I mostly read biography, political philosophy (which I have loved ever since university days) and history. With the occasional novel. And I mainly watch documentaries.
Really I need to take the next 6 months off just to catch up on all the unread books and unwatched documentaries I have waiting for me.
Most modern novels feel so small, somehow.
Jennifer Johnston is another writer worth seeking out. I've realised that all the Irish writers I've recommended have a certain Chekovian quality to them.
Prob the thing in a novel that has made me laugh most is that scene in Money where the protaganist is at the Met and needs a piss.
Only two passages of fiction (outside Wodehouse) have made me helpless with laughter. The first was the spider scene in Irvine Welsh's short story The Granton Star Cause (I think that's the title), the second was the scene in Martin Amis's The Information (his best novel, I reckon) when the pilot craps himself.
I read the Information when it came out and have no recollection of that. I'll give it another go if you'll do the same for late Roth.
Dickens. Sorry. Turgid stuff. Jonathan Franzen. Boring. Zadie Smith. Boring and jejune. Virginia Woolf. A failed James Joyce Saul Bellow? I've never read him because I can't get beyond the first paragraph. The late works of Philip Roth. Boring.
I like Martin Amis. He can be laugh out loud funny, a very rare talent in a writer.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
To be fair to Woolf I like her "minor" works, e.g. Orlando, or a Room of One's Own, it's the serious important novels I dislike, To The Lighthouse etc.
Failed modernism.
I'd add Trollope and Sylvia Plath to the overrated authors list.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Plath's Ariel is maybe the greatest volume of poetry written by a woman, in English, in the 20th century.
LOL
Its unreadable crap bigged up by people trying to look intellectual and/or 'progressive'.
Does anyone know any of Plath's poems apart from the last paragraph of the one about her dad ?
Even the film they did of her has more from Birthday Letters than from her own work.
I can quote from at least half a dozen Plath poems, in Ariel.
You're Lady Lazarus Moon in the Yew Tree Daddy Edge Balloons
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent, One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty. She has folded
Them back into her body as petals Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about, Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.
Plath wrote that about three days before she killed herself, as her two children slept upstairs. Brrr.
Ted Hughes was a minor poet in comparison. Which is ironic, as she always felt overshadowed by him.
I prefer Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney. I found the Bell Jar unreadable.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Don't be silly.
...Here is a hand To fill it and willing To bring teacups and roll away headaches And do whatever you tell it. Will you marry it? It is guaranteed...
...To thumb shut your eyes at the end And dissolve of sorrow. We make new stock from the salt. I notice you are stark naked. How about this suit...
...Black and stiff, but not a bad fit. Will you marry it? It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof Against fire and bombs through the roof. Believe me, they'll bury you in it...
And let's not forget the absolute incantatory, spellbinding brilliance of Daddy
I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I’m finally through.
Chills me every time I read it, even now, and I've read it 700 times.
This one always seems to make me bite my lip.
Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn's rain. When you awaken in the morning's hush, I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there, I did not die.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
To be fair to Woolf I like her "minor" works, e.g. Orlando, or a Room of One's Own, it's the serious important novels I dislike, To The Lighthouse etc.
Failed modernism.
I'd add Trollope and Sylvia Plath to the overrated authors list.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Plath's Ariel is maybe the greatest volume of poetry written by a woman, in English, in the 20th century.
LOL
Its unreadable crap bigged up by people trying to look intellectual and/or 'progressive'.
Does anyone know any of Plath's poems apart from the last paragraph of the one about her dad ?
Even the film they did of her has more from Birthday Letters than from her own work.
I can quote from at least half a dozen Plath poems, in Ariel.
You're Lady Lazarus Moon in the Yew Tree Daddy Edge Balloons
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent, One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty. She has folded
Them back into her body as petals Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about, Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.
Plath wrote that about three days before she killed herself, as her two children slept upstairs. Brrr.
Ted Hughes was a minor poet in comparison. Which is ironic, as she always felt overshadowed by him.
I prefer Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney. I found the Bell Jar unreadable.
You've done it now young lady.
SeanT has STRONG opinions on Seamus Heaney.
I know. And he was talking rubbish the first time he came out with them. When I did drama I performed a few of his poems. That's why I like them. Poems need to be said. A good poem is like music.
I like some of the other stuff Heaney has written as well.
@MP_SE - it's not a brake of any sort; it's a very mild and temporary benefits payment restriction, applicable under only certain circumstances, and a one-off.
Cameron has asked for it to be called an Emergency Brake (and succeeded) because most people don't follow the detail and he hopes that the strapline will fool people into thinking he has achieved something substantive.
No one has mentioned Agatha Christie. Possibly nor high brow enough for Pb.
Dorothy L. Sayers fan myself, actually. I've always found Christie's plots were either hopelessly unrealistic or blindingly obvious, with the dazzling and brilliant exception of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
But I have to confess I've never heard of most of the other authors people have mentioned and have never read Pratchett.
"A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving is also good.
The 3 novels by JG Farrell: Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Hill Station are worth seeking out.
Perhaps we should now list those writers we think are overrated.
- Martin Amis - Salman Rushdie - Howard Jacobson - other than his first novel "Coming from Behind"(which made me laugh out loud on the tube) and his essays.
Dickens. Sorry. Turgid stuff. Jonathan Franzen. Boring. Zadie Smith. Boring and jejune. Virginia Woolf. A failed James Joyce Saul Bellow? I've never read him because I can't get beyond the first paragraph. The late works of Philip Roth. Boring.
I like Martin Amis. He can be laugh out loud funny, a very rare talent in a writer.
Dickens - he gets his place in the canon just for a Christmas Carol. I took my kids to the adaptation at the Rose theatre and it was probably the best part of this Christmas.
Agree the next three but you should give Bellow and esp late Roth another go. Try Everyman. Speaks to men of a certain age. And the Human Stain was there about college PC intolerence, when was it, 15, 20 years ago?
The Human Stain has one of the finest pieces of writing in the English language (the scene in the Chinese restaurant). I dream of being able to take a reader through such a range of emotions in such a short passage.
A lot of the American Novel is about style. But Roth married that in his later works with some very deep insights into the human condition.
I tend to agree that The Novel has had it as an art form. But, still, I pick a book up from the shelf and...
Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding crowd was most enjoyable as well though I really don't do love stories.
Thomas Hardy was the greatest English novelist, I think: if you look at his entire body of work. Though Austen and the Brontes wrote individual works of greater brilliance.
Tess and Jude are just amazing. The latter almost unbearably sad.
He also wrote fantastic if depressing poetry. He should be more celebrated than he is.
He's a bit of a gloompuss, though.
My first proper boyfriend gave me a book of his poems:
"Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me,....."
Yeats is a fantastic poet. An Irish Airman foresees his Death is one of the finest poems ever.
My favourite books are the Fleming novels, Frederick Forsyth - the Fourth Protocol, Max Hastings' military histories (Overlord being my favourite), political biographies (I love Seldon in general, and Charles Moore on Thatcher) and socio-economic histories of the 17th and 18th Centuries. I also am a bit of railway enthusiast and love railway histories on closed lines.
I'm not a big novel person, really, but I really like William Golding - The Inheritors (my favourite) and Lord of The Flies. And Orwell's Animal Farm, of course.
I'm also a bit of a wonk. I love policy books by think-tanks like Reform, Policy Exchange and Civitas.
I am a big-novel fan. Jane Austen of course. George Eliot. Some Henry James. And the great French novelists - Zola, Stendhal, Balzac. And the Russian heavies. But not Dickens.
It is a running joke amongst my family that I have more science fiction paperbacks than Waterstones (horribly true, at least in terms of shelf space), but I successfully ran a bookclub for 13 months, so i have some small passing acquaintance of Proper Literature Like Wot GrownUps Read. Julian Barnes, Nelson Algren, Kobo Abe good: Salman Rushdie, OK: Herman Melville, rubbish. Dostoyevsky, absolutely brilliant. I keep meaning to read Anna Karenina, but real life intervenes.
No one has mentioned Agatha Christie. Possibly nor high brow enough for Pb.
FFS.....Is there absolutely nothing you won't put a political slant on just to get in a dig against the Tories? Jeez get a life why don't you? It's boring boring.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
I'm of the 'Don't like Dickens' camp. I once tried to read Bleak House on holiday, on the grounds that it was supposed to be the best. Fortunately my bag was stolen on the beach so I didn't have to finish it.
Graham Greene at his best (Our Man in Havana, The Comedians) is superb. But some of his books are really quite boring.
There's nothing wrong with Dickens that cutting two-thirds of most novels, renaming the characters and resetting the times and locations can't solve.
I am irresistibly reminded of that wonderful gibe from Martin Johnson in 1986:
'There are only three things wrong with this England side. They can't bat, they can't bowl and they can't field.'
Hmm. No comment.
But seriously, many of his novels are well characterised but feel clichéd now, partly through familiarity and partly because Dickensianism is itself a cliché - the time and place are not familiar to us now in a way that they were to his readers: to make the books live, they really need to be set today, probably in another country, or in a different time again. They're also generally horribly padded and can be cut quite easily without losing essential plot.
No one has mentioned Agatha Christie. Possibly nor high brow enough for Pb.
Dorothy L. Sayers fan myself, actually. I've always found Christie's plots were either hopelessly unrealistic or blindingly obvious, with the dazzling and brilliant exception of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
I guessed Roger Ackroyd very early on, her words in a certain passage just jumped out at me. Most don't get it though.
It was the book that made her name (I think about 5 years into her writing), and therefore the reason she is still well known today.
I replied to that tweet. Kuenssberg has caught conferencitis: like the Mannekin Pis, it might look good in Brussels but once you're back in London, people will be asking 'is that it'?
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
To be fair to Woolf I like her "minor" works, e.g. Orlando, or a Room of One's Own, it's the serious important novels I dislike, To The Lighthouse etc.
Failed modernism.
I'd add Trollope and Sylvia Plath to the overrated authors list.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Plath's Ariel is maybe the greatest volume of poetry written by a woman, in English, in the 20th century.
LOL
Its unreadable crap bigged up by people trying to look intellectual and/or 'progressive'.
Does anyone know any of Plath's poems apart from the last paragraph of the one about her dad ?
Even the film they did of her has more from Birthday Letters than from her own work.
I can quote from at least half a dozen Plath poems, in Ariel.
You're Lady Lazarus Moon in the Yew Tree Daddy Edge Balloons
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent, One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty. She has folded
Them back into her body as petals Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about, Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.
Plath wrote that about three days before she killed herself, as her two children slept upstairs. Brrr.
Ted Hughes was a minor poet in comparison. Which is ironic, as she always felt overshadowed by him.
I prefer Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney. I found the Bell Jar unreadable.
You've done it now young lady.
SeanT has STRONG opinions on Seamus Heaney.
Hah. Don't. The last time I opined on Heaney I got thousands of death threats from Dublin.
*whispers*
He wasn't really all that good though....
The greatest Irish poet was undoubtedly W.B. Yeats.
'd add Trollope and Sylvia Plath to the overrated authors list.
Nobody would have heard of Plath if she hadn't married Ted Hughes.
Plath's Ariel is maybe the greatest volume of poetry written by a woman, in English, in the 20th century.
LOL
Its unreadable crap bigged up by people trying to look intellectual and/or 'progressive'.
Does anyone know any of Plath's poems apart from the last paragraph of the one about her dad ?
Even the film they did of her has more from Birthday Letters than from her own work.
I can quote from at least half a dozen Plath poems, in Ariel.
You're Lady Lazarus Moon in the Yew Tree Daddy Edge Balloons
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent, One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty. She has folded
Them back into her body as petals Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about, Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.
Plath wrote that about three days before she killed herself, as her two children slept upstairs. Brrr.
Ted Hughes was a minor poet in comparison. Which is ironic, as she always felt overshadowed by him.
You're more predictable than Pavlov's dog.
Still its amusing to flush out the intellectually pretentious.
lol. It's really not pretension. I just like her poetry. You are free to dislike her. Both opinions are valid, and say nothing about either of us. Ted Hughes WAS minor though (and I knew him, very slightly - a truly charismatic man).
I was only joking - I'd thought of the Pavlov's dog metaphor at work and wanted to try it out.
To be honest I only read poetry for relaxation so I'm not interested in anything 'hard' so the likes of Hughes, Robert Frost, Christina Rossetti and AE Housman are more my choice.
No one has mentioned Agatha Christie. Possibly nor high brow enough for Pb.
FFS.....Is there absolutely nothing you won't put a political slant on just to get in a dig against the Tories? Jeez get a life why don't you? It's boring boring.
Quite. The most tediously partisan and acerbic poster on here.
No one has mentioned Agatha Christie. Possibly nor high brow enough for Pb.
Dorothy L. Sayers fan myself, actually. I've always found Christie's plots were either hopelessly unrealistic or blindingly obvious, with the dazzling and brilliant exception of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
I guessed Roger Ackroyd very early on, her words in a certain passage just jumped out at me. Most don't get it though.
It was the book that made her name (I think about 5 years into her writing), and therefore the reason she is still well known today.
I can guess the passage, but I missed it at the time. In mitigation, I was fourteen.
What I like about Sayers is that she is one of the very few authors where the murderer is usually obvious but actually the methodology is almost impossible to crack. Jonathan Creek (the 90s ones) were similar. She also doesn't talk down to her readers the way too many authors do, even though she was an Oxford graduate and a very intelligent woman who later became a successful scholarly translator.
In my mind the major reform was allowing schools to be run by head teachers, rather than by local authorities and teaching unions, allowing good schools to expand and poor schools to fail.
It could well be a poisonous legacy of Gove that there is more centralisation, not less. If it were me, I would abolish horizontal trusts, and only allow groups of schools to group together vertically (i.e. primary through sixth form) in small areas. And I would further abolish the DfES, so nobody can meddle with them from Whitehall however well-intentioned, and make a much greater effort to get parents involved in the running of the school. But none of that is happening and it's further away than it was under Major with grant-maintained schools.
I genuinely don't know about the maths GCSE issues, where is the hold up in implementation? Hope things manage to get sorted out in time.
To cut a long story short, three drafts have been put forward and rejected by OFQUAL on the basis that incorporating elements from what is currently Further Maths at A-level was not enough to make them rigorous. Unfortunately, it is not likely that anything more advanced will be in any way comprehensible to fourteen year old children unless they are remarkable prodigies, which most of them are not. At the moment, therefore, there are no textbooks or other resources for next year and we are fast running out of time to prepare them.
History has just been sent through, although I think OCR's School's History Project specification should actually have been sent back for redrafting as there are some major flaws in it (which is why I have advised the Head of my school to switch boards to AQA). RE has not, but as nobody is suggesting any changes to OFQUAL's minimum (which is about a full subject anyway) that's not likely to be a problem. Geography is still caught in a logjam. Not sure about English - I know there was a hiccup but I think it has been sorted.
The really exasperating thing is that I like these qualifications much more than the current ones, but taking twelve months more to get them right rather than panicking about them not being ready in time would not do any harm.
Thanks for long answer. Hopefully at some point in the future I will be one of those engaged parents, good luck with getting your exams sorted out in time.
Thanks for long answer. Hopefully at some point in the future I will be one of those engaged parents, good luck with getting your exams sorted out in time.
They're not mine Sandpit - it's the poor Head of Maths who's having the nervous breakdown!
What's worrying is that that's surely the most important subject, one where we are already struggling for good teachers and departmental heads - and then they get treated this way.
All around, this has been an entirely avoidable fiasco. And it's Gove's fault. He is not fit to be Prime Minister
I replied to that tweet. Kuenssberg has caught conferencitis: like the Mannekin Pis, it might look good in Brussels but once you're back in London, people will be asking 'is that it'?
Yes. Esp as original emergency brake was on migration. Second emergency brake was banning benefits for four years. This is third emergency brake meaning gradual ramp up of benefits over four years. Not much of brake at all, whether in effect for 7 years or 13.
I prefer Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney. I found the Bell Jar unreadable.
You've done it now young lady.
SeanT has STRONG opinions on Seamus Heaney.
I know. And he was talking rubbish the first time he came out with them. When I did drama I performed a few of his poems. That's why I like them. Poems need to be said. A good poem is like music.
I like some of the other stuff Heaney has written as well.
I genuinely don't understand the admiration for Heaney. Some of my poet friends (I have lots of poet friends!) viciously disagree with me.
But for me the test of a poet is quotability. That lyrical, memorable line that stays in the mind. That you carry with you, ornamenting your life. Plath could do it - write that killer line - Hughes couldn't. Housman did it, modern poets don't. Larkin did it with ease, Heaney failed.
When I ask my friendly poets to quote one Heaney line, they go blank, then look a bit desperate, then invariably say:
"Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it."
THAT, apparently, is the best line written by Seamus Heaney.
*stifles bigoted, anti-Irish laughter*
Get some better informed friends.
Try this.
"I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying-- He had always taken funerals in his stride-- And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram When I came in, and I was embarrassed By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble," Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest, Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, He lay in the four foot box as in his cot. No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
Agree on Dickens, Woolf. Haven't tried the others.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
I'm of the 'Don't like Dickens' camp. I once tried to read Bleak House on holiday, on the grounds that it was supposed to be the best. Fortunately my bag was stolen on the beach so I didn't have to finish it.
Graham Greene at his best (Our Man in Havana, The Comedians) is superb. But some of his books are really quite boring.
There's nothing wrong with Dickens that cutting two-thirds of most novels, renaming the characters and resetting the times and locations can't solve.
I am irresistibly reminded of that wonderful gibe from Martin Johnson in 1986:
'There are only three things wrong with this England side. They can't bat, they can't bowl and they can't field.'
That's funny, Reece Topley brought exactly the same quote to my mind earlier this evening.
I replied to that tweet. Kuenssberg has caught conferencitis: like the Mannekin Pis, it might look good in Brussels but once you're back in London, people will be asking 'is that it'?
Yes. Esp as original emergency brake was on migration. Second emergency brake was banning benefits for four years. This is third emergency brake meaning gradual ramp up of benefits over four years. Not much of brake at all, whether in effect for 7 years or 13.
It's akin to sticking your hand out of the window of a runaway train, and then withdrawing it back in very slowly, in the hope the air friction slows it down.
I replied to that tweet. Kuenssberg has caught conferencitis: like the Mannekin Pis, it might look good in Brussels but once you're back in London, people will be asking 'is that it'?
Better than nothing after the inevitable "Remain" vote I suppose.
According to John Boyd (Campaign Against Euro-Federalism) who is speaking at the Grassroots Out meeting in London a major trade union will be backing Leave on Monday.
Comments
I preferred Ulysses 31.
What a mess.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_433211.pdf
Tourism deficit for 2015 increases to nearly £17bn.
I want to help build as broad as possible a Tory coalition for Leave.
We'll need it.
If - and it is a big "if" - the sticking point is that the French want to impose Eurozone rules on us, then the PM needs to walk away and make it a clear issue: we are not in the euro. We are happy for those in the euro to integrate further as needed but in return we must not be made subject to their rules or the same rules because that is what an opt out from the euro means. Country X is seeking to impose this even though this is not necessary for the Eurozone. This is unacceptable. It is undermining our opt out and will have a cost for each and every one of us.
We'll keep going until we reach an agreement which gives the eurozone what they want and what we want without each of us interfering in the others' affairs.
He needs - both for domestic and European audiences - to define the issue which is causing the problems and not let it be defined by others.
please add also The Good Wife, the latest episode of which I'm about to watch.
I await to hear of our glorious leader's achievements thereafter.
Graham Greene at his best (Our Man in Havana, The Comedians) is superb. But some of his books are really quite boring.
I suspect a far smaller number have a problem with Brexit in principle.
Differential turnout skewing old enthusiastic Leavers would just be gravy.
Incidentally, I am not suggesting that is the case for you, but the huge amount of patronising snobbery we get from people who are genuine mediocrities is one of the more frustrating things we have to put up with.
51-36 ICM, 52-39 Comres
And we would at least know that no real reform is possible. But rushing to push through a deal when everyone is tired just to avoid some pictures on the tele is beyond pathetic.
Its unreadable crap bigged up by people trying to look intellectual and/or 'progressive'.
Does anyone know any of Plath's poems apart from the last paragraph of the one about her dad ?
Even the film they did of her has more from Birthday Letters than from her own work.
It would be nice to think Gove was not a complete failure at something. Everyone should have some successes. Even Gordon Brown was right about Zimbabwe. However, I compare Gove to Clarke - a politician of undoubted, even remarkable talent, whom people want to admire, but simply cannot because of his habit of rubbing people up the wrong way apparently for no better reason than to try and show his own brilliance in a clearer light.
Non-voters split 60-28 for Remain.
My favourite books are the Fleming novels, Frederick Forsyth - the Fourth Protocol, Max Hastings' military histories (Overlord being my favourite), political biographies (I love Seldon in general, and Charles Moore on Thatcher) and socio-economic histories of the 17th and 18th Centuries. I also am a bit of railway enthusiast and love railway histories on closed lines.
I'm not a big novel person, really, but I really like William Golding - The Inheritors (my favourite) and Lord of The Flies. And Orwell's Animal Farm, of course.
I'm also a bit of a wonk. I love policy books by think-tanks like Reform, Policy Exchange and Civitas.
He's got a face like a slapped arse:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-35601369
Favourite novels: Coming Up For Air
To Kill A Mockingbird
Bleak House
The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd
The Book Of Illusions
The Affirmation
The Good Soldier Svejk
The Castle
I'd also like Cousin Phyllis, but since it's only 70 pages long, that might be cheating.
...Here is a hand
To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed...
...To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit...
...Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it...
'There are only three things wrong with this England side. They can't bat, they can't bowl and they can't field.'
Agree the next three but you should give Bellow and esp late Roth another go. Try Everyman. Speaks to men of a certain age. And the Human Stain was there about college PC intolerence, when was it, 15, 20 years ago?
I genuinely don't know about the maths GCSE issues, where is the hold up in implementation? Hope things manage to get sorted out in time.
"Brexit appeals most strongly to older and working-class voters, those who left school before their nineteenth birthday"
I thought everyone left school before their nineteenth birthday, unless he's talking American.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12164486/Do-British-voters-actually-want-to-leave-the-EU.html
Everyone has reckoned that Outers include many Conservatives, hardly far right, stop feeling so sorry for yourself, you should be happy with your poll figures
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/datasets-and-tables/data-selector.html?cdid=J467&dataset=drsi&table-id=1
The era of the Lawson Boom, yuppies with red braces, Loadsamoney and the triumph of Thatcherism bought only half the amount of things that the misery starved austerity wasteland of today does.
Now I wonder how we 'pay' for all these things we buy.
I've bought it, but still have the Ice Twins on the shelf. Sorry SeanT!
I share your (Philip T) view that Cameron for Leave is possible. In fact I was looking around earlier to find an opportunity to back such an outcome. I'd have wanted at least 250-1 mind you.
I don't think Cameron is this deep, but it would be a blinding long game to have put himself where he is and now come out for "Leave".
https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/700761412726087680
Trump 32
Cruz 19
Rubio 18
Bush 8
Kasich 7
Carson 6
http://www.politico.com/blogs/south-carolina-primary-2016-live-updates-and-results/2016/02/south-carolina-poll-trump-rubio-cruz-bush-219487?lo=ap_c1
Here are the internals:
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55647a77e4b09841c6470032/t/56c7375c8259b51714828a3e/1455896417908/Results+from+NRI's+South+Carolina+Poll?format=1500w
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55647a77e4b09841c6470032/t/56c737c6ab48de588b0190f1/1455896526297/Results+from+NRI+South+Carolina+Poll?format=1500w
Among past voters Trump leads by 29-21, among new voters he leads 45-15.
So it's all about turnout.
Still its amusing to flush out the intellectually pretentious.
It could well be a poisonous legacy of Gove that there is more centralisation, not less. If it were me, I would abolish horizontal trusts, and only allow groups of schools to group together vertically (i.e. primary through sixth form) in small areas. And I would further abolish the DfES, so nobody can meddle with them from Whitehall however well-intentioned, and make a much greater effort to get parents involved in the running of the school. But none of that is happening and it's further away than it was under Major with grant-maintained schools. To cut a long story short, three drafts have been put forward and rejected by OFQUAL on the basis that incorporating elements from what is currently Further Maths at A-level was not enough to make them rigorous. Unfortunately, it is not likely that anything more advanced will be in any way comprehensible to fourteen year old children unless they are remarkable prodigies, which most of them are not. At the moment, therefore, there are no textbooks or other resources for next year and we are fast running out of time to prepare them.
History has just been sent through, although I think OCR's School's History Project specification should actually have been sent back for redrafting as there are some major flaws in it (which is why I have advised the Head of my school to switch boards to AQA). RE has not, but as nobody is suggesting any changes to OFQUAL's minimum (which is about a full subject anyway) that's not likely to be a problem. Geography is still caught in a logjam. Not sure about English - I know there was a hiccup but I think it has been sorted.
The really exasperating thing is that I like these qualifications much more than the current ones, but taking twelve months more to get them right rather than panicking about them not being ready in time would not do any harm.
In one of his novels he took 4 pages to describe a small building in a farm yard. ( can't remember which one now?)
They even named an omelette after him
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/arnoldbennettishomel_93629
Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding crowd was most enjoyable as well though I really don't do love stories.
SeanT has STRONG opinions on Seamus Heaney.
I will get round to reading it; I promise ;-)
Really I need to take the next 6 months off just to catch up on all the unread books and unwatched documentaries I have waiting for me.
Most modern novels feel so small, somehow.
Jennifer Johnston is another writer worth seeking out. I've realised that all the Irish writers I've recommended have a certain Chekovian quality to them.
No one has mentioned Agatha Christie. Possibly nor high brow enough for Pb.
http://livestream.com/accounts/16851580/events/4841082
Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn's rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there, I did not die.
I like some of the other stuff Heaney has written as well.
Cameron has asked for it to be called an Emergency Brake (and succeeded) because most people don't follow the detail and he hopes that the strapline will fool people into thinking he has achieved something substantive.
He might still be right.
I tend to agree that The Novel has had it as an art form. But, still, I pick a book up from the shelf and...
My first proper boyfriend gave me a book of his poems:
"Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me,....."
Yeats is a fantastic poet. An Irish Airman foresees his Death is one of the finest poems ever.
Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka says a draft agreement with Britain on European Union reforms is on the way, Reuters news agency reports.
But seriously, many of his novels are well characterised but feel clichéd now, partly through familiarity and partly because Dickensianism is itself a cliché - the time and place are not familiar to us now in a way that they were to his readers: to make the books live, they really need to be set today, probably in another country, or in a different time again. They're also generally horribly padded and can be cut quite easily without losing essential plot.
I guessed Roger Ackroyd very early on, her words in a certain passage just jumped out at me. Most don't get it though.
It was the book that made her name (I think about 5 years into her writing), and therefore the reason she is still well known today.
To be honest I only read poetry for relaxation so I'm not interested in anything 'hard' so the likes of Hughes, Robert Frost, Christina Rossetti and AE Housman are more my choice.
What I like about Sayers is that she is one of the very few authors where the murderer is usually obvious but actually the methodology is almost impossible to crack. Jonathan Creek (the 90s ones) were similar. She also doesn't talk down to her readers the way too many authors do, even though she was an Oxford graduate and a very intelligent woman who later became a successful scholarly translator.
I *love* her. 4.50 from Paddington and the ABC Murders please.
What's worrying is that that's surely the most important subject, one where we are already struggling for good teachers and departmental heads - and then they get treated this way.
All around, this has been an entirely avoidable fiasco. And it's Gove's fault. He is not fit to be Prime Minister
Good night all.
Try this.
"I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four foot box, a foot for every year."