We remember Falstaff on this, Shakespeare’s putative birthday, because we relate to him as a wayward form of kin, a relative in need of reforming, a character in whom we see aspects of our own dented personalities…
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If I had to vouch for the sustaining appeal of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway one hundred years on, I would emphasise its capacity to produce happiness, joy even from a set of intensely felt present tense moments…
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I am interested in small things because they ask for our full attention. I am interested in small people in small towns because they seem to represent most of us going about our daily lives. George Eliot knew this…
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Four girls sitting on a flint wall in winter; four girls poorly dressed beneath a grey sky. It is November and the sky is low hanging: a grey ceiling I think…
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Walking takes you back in time, especially old walks, the ones you know off by heart. Walking old routes catches you out: nothing you said about it was quite true. Nothing was quite where you left it…
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We write to know we aren’t alone. We read for the same reason: to lose ourselves in the lives of other characters; to surround ourselves with the sights and sounds of other lives; to join imagined communities we can take on as our own…
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