Biblical advertisting: Proverbs 11:1 in Bunbeg
In Bunbeg, Co. Donegal (officially the smallest fishing harbour in Ireland), one sees the following written in old Gaelic script (note the “overdot” or ponc séimhithe used to indicate a…
Category: commonplace book
“Once you stop treating “science” like some kind of oracle, many problems disappear.”
It’s been a while since I reblogged anything from Adam deVille here. A recent posting on his Eastern Christian Books blog – previewing the book Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around The World Really…
‘I have the strongest possible dislike for Ireland. I dislike that awful national egotism, always going on about what it means to be Irish.’
I have previously blogged about Anthony Powell. I’m well aware that he had little time for Ireland and the Irish – not something especially hard to discern from a quote likethis…
Anthony Powell on the strange case of Ashton-Gwatkin
From Duncan Fallowell’s interview with Anthony Powell “Twentieth Century Characters” ‘The only time something I’ve written has attracted the law was when I reviewed a novel of Sartre’s for the Times…
F, L and P from the Index of “Eugenics and Other Evils”, GK Chesterton
J G Ballard, in his 1977 short story The Index, told the story of one of the Twentieth Century’s most influential men: Henry Rhodes Hamilton … the only trace of whom…
A title longer than the poem: track of Alexander Pope’s “Epigram Engraved On The Collar Of A Dog Which I Gave To His Royal Highness” on Spotify
I found this somewhat amusing. I love Pope, but do find this epigram a bit laboured: I am his Highness’ dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog…
“He had an irritating habit of insulting waiters in restaurants, and often sat at the table for 45 minutes before deigning to consult the menu. ” – the Daily Telegraph obituary of Charles Higham
I am partial to the odd rogue (fully aware that, as the narrator of “The Spy Who Loved Me” would say, it reads better than it lives) and partial to the obituary page…
“A monarch is a man; but an oligarchy is not men” – a penseé from G K Chesterton
I endorse Allan Massie’s verdict on Chesterton as a pungent, brilliant essayist occasionally lapsing into tedium through overwrought prose. Here is one of his passages of pellucid power, from The…
Séamus Sweeney 