Richard Lemmer composes a love ballard. What could we do with Central Hall? Could anyone see past the cute ducklings and the picturesque weeping willows to reveal the darker side of our artificial lake? In short, who could turn the grey, uninspiring blocks of our university into the setting of disturbing fiction? If anyone...
Read more »

Harriet Evans magnifies James Quinton’s contracted cities. The city is the dominant trope in modern poetry and the rushed, hectic city life, the life of the poet. In 1798 Wordsworth began ‘Lines Written In Early Spring’: ‘I heard a thousand blended notes / While in a grove I sat reclined’. Today, modern city-dwelling poets...
Read more »

Richard Lemmer identifies the present mood of British literature. The satirical news website The Onion’s very own atlas – ‘Our Dumb World’ – describes England as ‘Surging Ahead To The 19th Century’. A little reductive? Maybe, but looking at last year’s Booker short list, The Onion’s shallow description may sum up deep problems with...
Read more »

Harriet Evans demystifies our literary snobbery. People are always surprised to discover that many of my favourite books belong to the much-derided fantasy sub-genre of fiction.  “But,” they exclaim, “you’re an English Literature student – surely that stuff isn’t literature?” Simply put, it is assumed that “literary” fiction, in the form of the short...
Read more »

Lewis Anton Earl explores the impact of the e-reader upon the experience of reading. Much has been written about both the consumer and cultural implications of the new generation of e-readers. The product’s market potential, social symbolism and physical features have been thoroughly dissected. But what of the fundamentally different sensual experience which the...
Read more »

Marnie Richards can’t make an emotional investment in an e-reader. At the end of January this year, Apple unveiled their latest creation: the ‘iPad’. The US release of this tablet computer coincided with a new Apple iBookstore, with the large screen of the portable iPad perfect for reading e-books. This has been hailed as...
Read more »

Holly Phillips confronts the inherently violent structures of mainstream pornography. Let’s face it: no one likes a corpse-fucker. Indeed, the UK law enacted on 29th of January 2009 went so far as to criminalise the production and possession of images, including necrophiliac porn, which it defined as ‘extreme pornography’. Under this legislation ‘extreme pornography’ constitutes...
Read more »

Justin Bailey explores the criminal beauty of The Big Sleep. At seven-twenty a single flash of hard white light shot out of Geiger’s house like a wave of summer lightning. As the darkness folded back on it and ate it up a thin tinkling scream echoed out and lost itself among the rain drenched trees....
Read more »

Rhiannon Judith Williams reviews Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. Before there was Twilight, there was Interview with the Vampire. Given the current climate of hysteria regarding the release of New Moon, the second film adaptation of the Twilight saga this week, I’ve chosen to revisit this teenage favourite and classic in the literary horror genre....
Read more »

Jane Crowley attempts to remedy the side effects of an English degree. As an English student, I hear the words “You must like reading” at least three times a week. The answer to this has always been to nod profusely and exclaim “I love it!” This has changed recently, and I find myself thinking...
Read more »