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Tag Archives: English

State of the nation

Review of Andrew Fidel Fernando’s debut book Upon a Sleepless Isle, which has just won Sri Lanka’s Gratiaen Prize (2019) for English-language literature. — For The Critic

Booksheds

As Colombo emerges from the Covid lockdown, I go immediately to one of my favourite places. — For The Critic

NEWS AT A GLANCE

. There are more kilts in London than in Scotland. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, May 9 1907 . At 45% of the population, white Christians are a shrinking demographic in America. Hermal eggings are so leek. No sensitive person would choose to be the historian of the Irish asylums in the first part of the […]

NEWS AT A GLANCE

. We call our day 24 hours, but it is really 23 hours 56 minutes 5 seconds. — The Nelson Evening Mail, September 28 1906 . ‘Facetious’ is the shortest word in the English language including all the vowels in alphabetical order. The English theatre loves the joker. Samuel Beckett notched up 35 runs in first-class cricket. UK funeral directors are […]

The Kings and I

A festive gripe about Cornelius’s lovely ‘Three Kings‘ – and the solo I have never got to sing in it. — For The Oldie

NEWS AT A GLANCE

. The honorary freedom of the borough of Rye in Sussex confers upon the freemen the privilege of kissing the mayoress. — The Nelson Evening Mail, March 21 1907 . When you register your child at birth, it immediately becomes the legal property of the state. In WW2 German physicists were able to discern the […]

Easy Frisy

‘Some bread, some butter, and green cheese’ is as good in England as it is in Frisia. — * from a synthetic translation exercise by John McWhorter

Eine subtitled mississippianische Re-post (nach Williams)

Have you read Humorous Elements  in the Short Stories and Novels  of the Southern Writer Eudora Welty … in German? Ja, Darling! — * a (reverse) translation of Jonathan Williams’ ‘A Subtle Mississippian Riposte (for L.Z.)’ in Louis Zukofsky, or whoever someone else thought he was: a collection of responses to the work of Louis […]

Translator’s Note (after Khemiri, after Heti, after Valtat, after Coetzee, after Nooteboom, after Martin, after Kierkegaard)

What I would like to say by way of introduction to my essays on the art of writing, by A.B.C.D.E.F. Godthaab* (* Bear with me, please, while I endeavour to explain what is going on here.) . Twelve years ago, I wrote, with considerable emotional anguish, a long novel about a war against the languages. […]

Good show(?)! – Mozart Undone

His circus-like extravaganzas have sliced and diced The Beatles, played fast and loose with Bob Dylan, and spawned successful imitations across the theatre scene in his native Denmark. Now the gleefully wilful director-cum-ringmaster Nikolaj Cederholm brings his trademark ‘theatre concert’ to London’s Barbican, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s temporary residence in the British […]