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Tag Archives: Homer

Trouble at’ Mill

Monday, May 31, 2021

Notes on the life (and afterlife) of JS Mill, philosopher . The classical liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill was born and died this month – in, respectively, 1806 and 1873 – and in between he wrote (or co-wrote, with his wife, and then his step-daughter) On Liberty, Utilitarianism, Principles of Political Economy, Considerations of Representative Government, […]

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The Gentleman’s Marathon

Monday, October 5, 2020

On my attempt to run 26.2 miles, in Pheidippides’ footsteps. — For The Critic

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged Afghanistan, army, artillery, Athens, Bosnia, Brett Raymond, champagne, Chariots of Fire, Charlton, Classics, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, death, gentlemen, Google, Greece, Haruki Murakami, health, hills, Honourable Artillery Company, Iraq, Joseph James Prosser, kilometers, London marathon, Lucian, Marathon, Merrell, miles, Olympics, Panathinaiko Stadium, Persians, Phaleron War Cemetery, Pheidippides, running, Silverstone, the Aegean, The Critic, war | Comments (0)

Selassie come home

Thursday, February 6, 2020

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste Canongate, £16.99, pp. 428 . In 1935 the troops of Benito Mussolini’s sinister-clownish Roman Empire II invaded Ethiopia, in large part out of spite for Italy’s embarrassing defeat there 40 years before. Initially largely uncontested – thanks both to emperor Haile Selassie’s desperate faith in international brotherhood and to […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Abysinnia, Adwa, Andy McNab, Canongate, death, dragons, Ethiopia, fiction, gas, Haile Selassie, history, Italians, Maaza Mengiste, Mussolini, photography, sex, the Bible, the Derg, The Spectator, Verdi, war, women, WW2 | Comments (0)

Flak Jacket to Dust Jacket

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Men at War: What Fiction Tells Us About Conflict, from The Iliad to Catch-22 By Christopher Coker (Hurst 325pp £25) My Life as a Foreign Country By Brian Turner (Jonathan Cape 240pp £16.99) Seamus Heaney once remarked upon the heroes of antiquity that it is ‘not so much their procedures on the page which are […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged America, Brian Turner, Christopher Coker, film, Iraq, Literary Review, literature, London School of Economics, memoir, Poetry, Russell Crowe, Seamus Heaney, Vietnam, war | Comments (0)

23.10.12 – UPDATE (2)

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

1800 Home. Open new Iliad edition. Epigraph: ‘For Derek Walcott More Homeric kudos’

Filed in Non-fictions | Also tagged books, Derek Walcott, diary, Iliad, Johns Hopkins, micro-non-fiction, Poetry, war | Comments (0)

23.10.12

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

0930 Retweet Homeric ‘Rain of blood’ detail (courtesy unknown female) 1100 Rewrite Rupert Brooke one-liner, ref. Danish political TV series 1130 Post arrives, incl. new Johns Hopkins Iliad translation 1315 Stanford’s: 1 x scratch-off gold world map 1400 To barracks for Afghanistan mobilisation briefing

Filed in Non-fictions | Also tagged Afghanistan, books, Denmark, diary, Iliad, Johns Hopkins, maps, micro-non-fiction, Poetry, Rupert Brooke, TV, Twitter | Comments (0)