Friday, 29 June 2012

Le gérondif d’un fruit sec.

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That the writer looking for wriggle-room when attempting to compare the incomparable invariably finds a lexicon-defying escape hatch in the ...
Thursday, 28 June 2012

Thatlessness, Redundancy, Probability and Glitchiness.

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A lawyer, a specialist in Shipping and Transport, wrote to me recently, pointing out there are  precedents in Marine Law being cited and dis...
Friday, 8 June 2012

Fruits secs and the Napoleon of Over-Stippled Prose

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A recent fossicking in a rummage sale at a Cambridge country house brought to light a rare volume by that scourge of poetastry, eminent fra...
Tuesday, 22 May 2012

A Droll Macaw with a Lyric Tongue.

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Isn’t it astonishing how the lyric voice can often spring from a fount of less than heroic proportions. I’m thinking of Swinburne here. ...
Monday, 21 May 2012

A Way of Seeing: Ronald Searle

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Having only this evening viewed a truly remarkable (and sobering) documentary on BBC2 TV, The Fall of Singapore: The Great Betrayal , I was...
Thursday, 17 May 2012

Mangled Frankenstein: the Perils of the e-Text.

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In four years’ time (2016) I shall be ready to commemorate the bicentennial of the birth of Frankenstein , when I intend to explode the myt...
Tuesday, 15 May 2012

‘They All Ought to be Hung’: a Minor Spat.

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Talking of Roger Casement being ‘hanged on a comma’, I am reminded of my recent spat with an admired American translator from the French of...