The cultural power of balladry
This ancient form can still entrance and unnerve us
By
Frances Wilson
Frances Wilson’s books include Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark (Bloomsbury Circus).
Latest articles
All Articles
How Britain changed under Elizabeth II
Andrew Marr’s Elizabethans is a history of the British national spirit from 1953 to the present day.
By
Why M John Harrison’s The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again won the Goldsmiths Prize
M John Harrison’s masterpiece has inventiveness embedded in its very DNA.
By
The sacrifices of George Orwell’s first wife
Discovering the life of Eileen Blair, the “black hole at the centre of Orwell studies”.
By
How Wordsworth and Coleridge shaped each other
In Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, Richard Holmes described how, aged 18, he followed the route taken by…
By
How manners made man
Without its own code of manners, any social group would dissolve into anarchy.
By
A Revolution of Feeling traces the history of human emotion
Rachel Hewitt’s book is fuelled by vim and vigour.
By
I have no sense of my age – every day is Groundhog Day
I live in a state of perpetual excitement, like a figure in a Quentin Blake illustration.
By
Shipwrecked: looking for God in The Ancient Mariner
Malcolm Guite’s religious portrait of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
By