P.G. Wodehouse was one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His most famous fictional creation was Jeeves, the knowing and...

George Borrow (1803-1881) was an English author who was contemporary with novelists such as Charles Dickens and George Eliot. Well-known in ...

Beethoven had a housekeeper.* She did the cooking and housekeeping while he composed music. I am sure the modern view of the matter is that ...

Richard Church (1893-1972) Richard Church was a poet and novelist who was particularly active during the 1930s and 1940s. Perhaps his best k...

W.E. Henley’s poem Invictus was written in 1875. Originally the poem was published untitled; the name ‘Invictus’ was added by anthologist A...

Vladimir Horowitz (1903 - 1989) Pianist Vladimir Horowitz in a 1977 interview : When I’m on the stage I’m one person, when I’m out of t...

Colin Wilson’s book The Outsider , published in 1956, has been described as ‘the classic study of alienation, creativity and the modern mind...

The Cloister and the Hearth is a nineteenth century novel written by Charles Reade. It was once considered a classic of literature but is n...

W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) W. Somerset Maugham was one of Britain’s most popular fiction writers during the 1930s. He is somewhat...

From Saint Paul by F.W.H. Myers: Whoso has felt the Spirit of the Highest Cannot confound nor doubt Him nor deny: Yea with one voice, O...

The epithet ‘I disapprove of what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it’ is sometimes attributed to Voltaire, but first ...

In Edith Nesbit’s The Railway Children , when the family becomes worse off and leaves their salubrious house in a London suburb, the life wh...

Bush House in London Paul Kriwaczek’s book In Search of Zarathustra , about the prophet Zoroaster, refers to the overthrow of the Shah of...

H.G. Wells included a ‘Declaration on the Rights of Man’ in his book The New World Order , published in 1940. This contains, for example, th...

In C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength , the druid Merlin, having been woken from over a thousand years of suspended animation, is talking to...

There was a feast by the blazing campfires in front of the lines of picketed elephants, and Little Toomai was the hero of it all. And the ...

Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963) Aldous Huxley was an English novelist who is probably now best remembered for the science fiction work Brave...

Further to the previous post , the following is another extract from The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This episode occurs soon...

The following are extracts from The Lost Prince * written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, published in 1915. This is the story of Stefan Lorist...

One of my colleagues has a book that was given as a school prize in a State primary school 50 years ago, and which shows how the dominant id...