‘The Little Keg’ and ‘At Christmas Time’: two plays for Christmas 2020
Actor Jack Tarlton looks back on this year’s virtual theatre workshops Playing with Prose, introducing two new festive-themed plays created by participants.
All posts filed under: Languages & Literature
‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ – a very Christmas murder
Dr Karen Attar, research fellow at the Institute of English Studies, uncovers traces of Thomas Becket in the Senate House Library.
Shaking the scholarly world: Francis Bacon and 400 Years of the ‘Novum Organon’
Tucked away among the treasures of Senate House Library is this ‘foundation of human progress and empowerment’, writes Dr Karen Attar.
Looking backward to look forward: reading Edward Bellamy during Covid-19
Dr Rajiv Prabhakar wonders whether utopian or speculative fiction, such as Edward Bellamy’s ‘Looking Backward: 2000–1887‘, might be a useful guide when considering alternative visions for the future.
Reading across continents: playing with prose with others on your own
Ahead of July’s Playing with Prose workshop, actor Jack Tarlton discusses his first experience of running a virtual theatre workshop as the world went into lockdown – and reflects on the ways on which it connected students around the world.
Messages from the margins: Augustus De Morgan’s annotations online
Dr Karen Attar, Senate House Library’s curator of rare books and university art, scrolls through the digital library of Augustus De Morgan to see what books the mathematician and mathematical historian annotated, when and how.
Tech opens new frontiers for SAS libraries
Dr Matthew Shaw, Joanna Ashe, David Gee and Dr Raphaële Mouren, reflect on the challenges faced by the School of Advanced Study’s (SAS) libraries during lockdown, and look ahead to the way things will change.
From Tokyo to Toulouse: the harp in translation
Ahead of her 30 May livestreamed concert as part of the OWRI Cross-Language Dynamics project at the Institute of Modern Languages Research, harpist Tamsin Dearnley reflects on her experiences moving between different musical traditions in Britain, France and Japan – and the extent to which music behaves like spoken language.
Encountering Covid-19: lessons from languages
As increasing numbers of epidemiologists and journalists highlight the UK government’s consistently missed opportunities to tackle the spread of Covid-19, Dr Joseph Ford, early career researcher at the Institute of Modern Languages Research, wonders why questions about the role of language and narrativisation have yet to be asked.
150 years of Trollope’s ‘The Vicar of Bullhampton’: ‘third rate for him but better than the best’
Curator at Senate House Library Dr Karen Attar teases out what makes this novel different, including marriage and morality and clinical depression.