Essays
1984: From Big Brother to Big Mother
The washerwoman is the Earth Mother, the Eternal Feminine, a symbol of endless endurance, fecundity and renewal. She stands for the life of
children and family and, by extension, the personal, inner life of the
individual which the ‘school’ world of 1984 seeks to crush.
Pirate or Peacemaker? A Spyglass on C S Forester
At all times to everyone, and about almost everything, C S Forster told
whoppers.
Inside Lucky Jim
Behind Amis’s Little Englander persona, he was as obsessed with
meaninglessness, arbitrariness and indeterminacy as any twentieth-
century absurdist. Amis is in fact a modernist in traditional dress.
Machismo’s Captive: Robert B Parker’s Private Eye
You cannot finish a Spenser novel without being encouraged and
emboldened, feeling that life can not only be mastered but also relished.
Stark World: Donald Westlake’s Bleak Anti-Hero
Land on Planet Stark, and you breathe an air that is dangerously
addictive. With their violent action set against the bleak backdrops of
empty lots, cheap hotels and disused buildings, they ignite a high
compression mix of tension and explosive energy.