Brideshead Revisited

Potok “was especially drawn to two important novels by Roman Catholic writers, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh and James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, saying that they guided him toward a career,” (Newsmakers). These two authors impacted Potok as a child and were a big reason he decided to start writing. However, “it…

Remember, remember the fifth of November of gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gun powder treason should ever be forgot.” The Grate Catesby Still, Fawkes was the only man ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions. A lot has happened in 411 years, parliaments today are highly respected, highly paid and monarchs tend to not conflate with constitutional proceedings, policy chaos or of the word of the people. Nevertheless, the term: treason is a byword and such law has…

It doesn’t help to be oversensitive, but sometimes it’s hard to avoid it. “Literary intellectuals love to sneer at polls and surveys,” writes Dominic Sandbrook in his determinedly informative and frequently entertaining attempt to analyse what makes British culture tick, “but historians cannot afford to do so.” The survey being putatively sneered at reveals the immense popularity of The Lord of the Rings; presumably the implications of that popularity, rather than the fact of it, which must…