Month: August 2010

Angel Tiger . Christopher Smart . Novels . Short Stories . The Dark Tower . Undiscovered Country . Variable Stars . Writing

Dog Day Afternoons

On 16 August 2010 by

These are the Dog Days. Dies Caniculares, the Romans called them, attributing their peculiar qualities to the influence of Sirius, the Dog Star. Falling between mid-July and mid-August, they’re often the hottest days of the year: airless, stifling, sultry, days, when everything’s dried-up and dusty, without any prospect of rain to cool the air, or Read More

Anglo-Zulu war . British Army . Literature . The Dark Tower . Undiscovered Country . Venezuela . War . Writing

Writing about War

On 9 August 2010 by

I don’t know anyone whose life hasn’t been affected by war. In fact, I’d go further and say that there can hardly be anyone alive today whose existence isn’t a consequence of war. War has shaped human society for thousands of years, and it’s impossible to think of a time – our own most of Read More

A Mild Suicide . Literature . Novels . Sex . The Dark Tower . Undiscovered Country . Writing

Writing about Sex

On 2 August 2010 by

Writing about sex is hard, as everybody knows. Unless you’re as breezily unafraid of double entendre as Kathy Lette, or as secure in the knowledge of your own literary genius as Philip Roth – whose depictions, in successive novels, of liaisons between septuagenarian men and thirty-something women, are offered without a trace of humour – Read More