Category Archives: Let’s talk about this…

Scrabble tiles spelling 'out' on a rainbow background

Come on out

In 2003, the final episode of the brilliant, funny, smart and excellently subversive Buffy the Vampire Slayer aired on US television. It took a bit longer for ‘Chosen’ to reach us Buffy obsessives in the UK, but I’d be willing to bet that the speech Buffy gives to her army

Dress to impress?

Years ago, when I was still at school, I was strong-armed into joining the school public speaking team. This was a rather entertaining activity which involved choosing a topic you wanted to debate, and putting forward a presentation, dealing with questions, chairing the discussion, and all that jazz. We weren’t

Testing…

It’s mid-July, school’s out (or almost!), and my walk into town over the past few weeks has often involved passing slightly worried teenagers fresh out of exams, consulting each other on how much detail they went into when discussing the Bay of Pigs in question three. At the time, I

Image problems

If you were watching this website a fortnight ago, you will have come across a post I wrote called ‘Tale Spin’, and the challenges (so-called) of writing a biography for someone like Brahms who, in comparison with some of his wilder contemporaries, did not really live the kind of life

Tale spin

A couple of days ago, I found myself having a Twitter exchange on a subject that I find fascinating and infuriating in equal parts. Several people were having a discussion about Brahms, and Brahms biography, and biographical approaches and writing styles. ‘Purple prose’, one person argued, was necessary in Brahms’s

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