The Plashing Vole

At the end of last week I wrote a fairly incoherent piece which boiled down to this: academics, students and managers need to be a little b...

So we hosted two very exciting novelists last week in an art gallery! ,  reading from and talking about their work. Hosted by poet, novelist...

Unlike some academics, I'm completely upfront about struggling and failure. One of the distinct things I remember from doing my PhD was ...

Today's duties: 1. Write next week's lecture on The Duchess of Malfi , along with a seminar task and a forum discussion theme. 2. ...

Actually, I'm under no illusions that there's a Public out there thirsting for the latest pearls of wisdom from my keyboard, but one...

One of my friends is off to visit 4AD 's headquarters today. Back when I didn't have responsibilities, I would happily spend all my ...

I hope everyone else is as confused by Britain's 'negotiations' with Europe as I am. Cameron seems to exacted a series of pledge...

There's an awful lot of stuff going on at the moment but I'm way too busy to get into it all, while other bits aren't for public...

It's been quite a week. First teaching week of the year so I've covered the entire origins of the Renaissance in one class and the e...

The end of last week was both sad and joyful: it mainly consisted of self-anaesthetising myself at a party to mark the departure of one of m...

I have no opinions this week. Instead I have a pile of marking, a new nephew in New Zealand, lots of Module Specification Templates to wri...

“It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as t...