The Plashing Vole

“You are the top 1%. The Labour party is in the shit. It is your job and your responsibility to take leadership going forward.” These are ...

So last week I had an afternoon off and went to London for the launch of the new Norton Shakespeare. It's 3500 pages long and 7.3cm thic...

In case you missed it, the government's plan to cut tax credits (a form of social security payment) to the working poor has attracted s...

It is, they say, Back to the Future 2 Day: the date Marty McFly arrives on from 1985 in the sequel and lots of spoiled millennial are makin...

Happy Monday one and all. There's so much going on between work and the usual dreadful events in the world that I don't feel capable...

Well, I'm back again. Where have you been, I hear absolutely nobody ask? But this is the blogosphere so the existence of a reading publi...

Doctors eh? Public school rowdies who spend most of their time fiddling with their bow ties, groping nurses or playing golf. Overpaid, const...

Occasionally, you see a publicity stunt so inept, so tone-deaf, that you wonder how it got through the planning stage. Here's a humdinge...

Where have I been? Well, I gave a paper with my co-author at a conference in London on Rediscovering Class Consciousness in Contemporary Lit...

I was listening to the wonderful The Reunion  on Radio 4 this morning, which gathered Alan Bennett and the living actors and producers who m...

Hi everyone. Since I last posted, I've had a rich and varied week or so: volunteering at the School Games in Manchester and Bolton, atte...