It’s the season to take stock, count up, measure out, pledge, promise and decide. I’ve made resolutions for the first time in five years and on my list is ‘read more poetry’. Expert resolution-makers say that simply vowing to do more of something is cheating. But I’m happy with my slightly vague ‘more’ and whoever […]
Tag: chocolate
Both/And not Either/Or… Black Olive Chocolate Truffles
This weekend a brilliant new exhibition opened at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London – Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990. I’ve written before about the challenges of teaching English literature undergraduates about postmodernism. Ask them what it is and they’re more likely to say what it isn’t. The V and A’s entrancing exhibition […]
Happy Birthday to you…
Eggs On The Roof is one year old today. When I started writing and photographing Eggs On The Roof, I got used to variations on a single, puzzled question: but what’s it for? The answer to start with was very simple – a slightly apologetic it’s for me. I wanted to write about food, books […]
A Chocolate Palimpsest
I’ve found the oddest books in a secondhand book shop – First-Line Index of English Poetry 1500-1800 in Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, edited by Margaret Crum. The two huge volumes contain just the first lines of over 23,000 poems, spread across more than 1,000 pages. I hated the idea of all that […]