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History II – A Life’s Passion
It probably doesn’t need to be said to anyone who’s looked at The Ravenstones website or read my previous blogs, but I am an avid reader of books on history, both modern and ancient. The list of authors and their works that I value is far too long to include in a brief post. But… Read more
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My Brush with Death
We interrupt these regular scheduled blog posts to bring you a brief update. On Friday, September 18, I was scheduled to have a hernia operation at a nearby surgical clinic. I keep a daily journal (Moleskine large-size, if you must know), and the last paragraph of my entry for the day before — after a… Read more
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Writing About Animals
Regular readers of these posts will find that I make regular recourse to the works of Bruce Handy, the author of a wonderful book about children’s literature called Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2017). Bruce Handy is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and… Read more
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A World of Animals
My godparents, Joan and James Lindsay, lived in the County of Sutherland, the most northerly part of Scotland (save for the Orkney and Shetland Islands), in a little village on the North Sea named Golspie (pop. 1350 today). Every Christmas they would send me books of some sort, all highly anticipated and happily received. For… Read more
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The Fantasy Writer (Part 2)
The Fellowship, The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2015) provides a detailed account of the famous quartet of mid-20th century Oxford-based authors (J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield and Charles Williams), in particular how they expressed their longing for tradition and re-enchant through… Read more
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The Fantasy Writer (Part 1)
H.G. Wells has generally been credited with originating the science fiction/fantasy genre. In the space of six years between 1895 and 1901, he wrote The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The Island of Doctor Moreau and The First Men in the Moon. A prodigious accomplishment, to be sure (I wish I… Read more
