by Steven McCabe | Feb 11, 2021 | Uncategorised
The Pandemic – A Year of Mistakes? Dr. Steven McCabe, Associate Professor, Birmingham City University The title of this blog is based on the song of the same name from 1981 album, Magic, Murder and the Weather from seminal post-punk Manchester band Magazine. As...
by Paul Davies | Nov 12, 2018 | Uncategorised
When we launched our book on V S Naipaul following his death in August, V.S.Naipaul – the Legacy, it provoked some of the strongest arguments that I have seen about an author. Branded a misogynist, a racist, and a right wing grump on the one hand, there was an...
by Paul Davies | Nov 8, 2018 | Uncategorised
As Stuart Haining writes in his book Planet Amazon – The Day the Earth was Renamed, if current trends continue – a rather big IF – then by 2055 Amazon could be responsible for half the world’s GDP. Of course in 1896, it was predicted that if current...
by Paul Davies | Oct 30, 2018 | Uncategorised
It’s perhaps a surprise to some people that there are readers who do feel guilty about not finishing a book. At Bite-Sized Books we have an answer – and a way of avoiding that guilt! One of the reasons that I started Bite-Sized Books – our tag line...
by Paul Davies | Oct 26, 2018 | Uncategorised
By traditional literary criticism, we usually mean the type of response to literature typified by, say, F R Leavis, which is highly judgmental, informed by a great deal of reading and thought and usually highly prescriptive. The Great Tradition would perhaps typify...
by Paul Davies | Sep 26, 2018 | Uncategorised
As an encouragement to all the potential authors we’ve talked to over the years who haven’t yet finished (or perhaps even started) their promised book – have a look at Anthony Trollope. Not for him the excuse that he didn’t have time! Aside...
by Paul Davies | Sep 19, 2018 | Uncategorised
I’ve been thinking about living in the UK and what it means and then I thought back to when I lived abroad.I lived in the Netherlands for nearly five years which was a brilliant experience. (I’d previously lived and worked in Wales and the Netherlands definitely...
by Paul Davies | Sep 16, 2018 | Uncategorised
For me there is only one author that immediately springs to mind – and that is John Keats. When he died in February 1821 in Rome, suffering from consumption and being treated with blood letting of all things, he was aged 25 – and I have never ceased...
by Paul Davies | Sep 16, 2018 | Uncategorised
Very early on, when I was having real doubts about the value of literary analysis – not helped by my lecturers taking that elitist cop out that if you don’t just know the value of literary analysis then you shouldn’t even bother as you’ll never know, I came...
by Paul Davies | Aug 3, 2018 | Uncategorised
Corruption takes many forms but each form – whether it is bribery, favouritism, nepotism, turning a blind eye to corrupt practices, or a complete lack of integrity – is a dagger at the heart of civil society. I’ve encountered and attempted to expose...
