Creating the Space
Art is not just a pleasing arrangement of shapes, textures and colours; it can only be properly appreciated in its cultural context. So-called ‘Conceptual’ artists use imagery to explores a theme that resonates with and provides insight into contemporary culture. In an age of internet dating and casual sex, Tracey Emin dares to explore female lust. Damien Hirst, on the other hand, expresses a more ordered corporate theme, in which feelings, emotions are put into boxes and bottles and categorised. But isn’t all art conceptual? Maybe historical notions of art... Read more »
All Change, Please
Life is a constant process of modification and adaptation, The basis of our identity is forged early on through the interaction with our parents. Our whole world is our family, our home. But then as we grow, become more independent, explore our environment, other people and situations influence us; extended... Read more »
Two’s company,three’s a couple. Betrayal; the anatomy of an affair.
At the beginning of a love affair, one might ask oneself either ‘what am I getting into’ or ’what am I getting out of?’ Every entrance is an exit. The only real question is, ‘Are we going to go through (with it)?’ The pivotal moment in Emma and Jerry’s seven year... Read more »
How you make me feel; projection and its identification.
Why do we trust some people and not others? Why do we admire some people? Why do some people make us uncomfortable? Is it because they remind us of significant figures in our lives; our mother, our father, a brother or sister, a lover, a husband, wife, a teacher? Are... Read more »
The past is another country. Or is it?
Friar Barnadine: "Thou hast committed--" Barabas: "Fornication-- but that was in another country / And besides, the wench is dead." Christopher Marlow (The Jew of Malta) What made people like Guy Burgess or Anthony Blunt rebel against their society, betray their country and spy for the soviet union? Was it a reaction against... Read more »
King George, the stammerer.
Bertie was never expected to become King. David, his elder brother, appeared a far more charismatic leader. People turned a blind eye to his dalliances with actresses and socialites as they had with his grandfather and nobody thought he would give up the throne for Mrs Simpson. But he did. ... Read more »
Projection; the missile of evolution.
Human beings don’t just adapt to their environment, they create and control it. Ever since the early hominids developed an opposable thumb that enabled them to grasp and manipulate objects, they could make things happen. The ability to throw missiles is a metaphor for how we could influence events at... Read more »
Design for Living? I don’t think it will work.
It should be easy, you know. The actual facts are so simple. I love you. You love me. You love Otto. I love Otto. Otto loves you. Otto loves me.’ Oh My God! Or as Mrs ‘Odge might say, ‘Well, ‘eres a pretty pickle.’ So why isn’t it easy? Why shouldn’t... Read more »
Forged in the fire
It’s our ability to control fire that made us human. This is the message of Richard Wrangham’s new book, ‘Catching Fire’, which was published last year. It’s the latest big idea in evolution, the one that Darwin ignored. Wrangham approaches the subject from the perspective of an anthropologist and primatologist;... Read more »
Keep on dancing
Every Saturday evening, sixteen million people turn on their televisions for two hours to watch Strictly Come Dancing, and turn on again the following night to see the results. But why? Why should a dance competition captivate the nation so much? It’s not Brucie’s jokes. And I can’t really believe... Read more »
Catherine; the tragedy for Jules, et Jim!
Catherine was one of those entrancing women, so full of life and fun, a free spirit, brave, sparky, vivacious – the kind of lively, fragile personality who lives on the edge; exciting, impulsive, passionate and very dangerous. Like a candle in the wind, she was never going to be tied... Read more »
There, but for the grace of God; a perspective on psychosis.
You’re driving me mad, I’m going crazy, I’m losing my mind, he’s just daft, it just doesn’t make sense! How many times a day do you hear such sentiments? How often do you express them yourself? Our lives are so complex, so pressurised that we have to work very hard... Read more »
Ghosts in the Nursery
Henry James leaves his stories open to his readers interpretations. That is the source of their intrigue. The ‘Turn of the Screw’ is his most famous and most chilling novel, but why? Is it because it explores, albeit obliquely, that most horrific of topics, the loss of innocence. The governess... Read more »
Winter’s coming. To the barricades!
It was 1789. France was still a feudal monarchy. All the power and the wealth was in the hands of the aristocracy, the King was like a God. His ancestor, Louis XIV, the Sun King, had built himself a wonderful palace in Versailles. The people had no voice. All the... Read more »
Chaos in the Bowels
Jules Henri Poincare (1854 – 1912) was in trouble. The most famous mathematician of his generation, he set himself the task of predicting accurately the orbits of the earth, moon and sun. His solution was brilliant. It was nominated for a prestigious international prize, but just before he was due... Read more »
White ribbons; repression and its consequences
Eichvald is a small Baronial village in northern Prussia, a patriarchal society dominated by powerful male autocrats who justified their abuse of their womenfolk and their children on the grounds that it was what they needed. ‘This will hurt me more than it hurts you’. It is the autumn of... Read more »
All life is yoga
‘All life is Yoga.’ So wrote Sri Aurobindo, sage and spiritual master, the author of ‘A Synthesis of Yoga.’ Yoga is not just a series of exercises to improve posture and make the body supple, its acolytes would define it as a method for self perfection leading ultimately to a... Read more »
A Question of Faith
There is so much we do not know. There is so much we take for granted. There is so much that we think we know but we cannot prove. How did stars form out of gases? Where did the gases come from? Was there really a big bang? If so... Read more »
Emma Bovary; incurable romantic or dangerous hysteric
Flaubert’s heroine didn’t start bad. She was a lively imaginative girl. She might have benefited from a bit of maternal constraint, but her mother died when she was just 11 and she was sent to a convent. There her religious fantasies took a romantic turn. She began reading the romantic... Read more »
Henry Moore; as edgy as a Yorkshire outcrop, as soft as rain.
For Henry Moore, art was the expression of the imagination rather than representation. He was not just a craftsman, he was an explorer. With typical Yorkshire bluntness, he declared, ‘I express myself in shapes; that’s my language.’ The same recurrent shapes featured prominently in Moore’s work, the reclining female figure,... Read more »
The skin of the painter
She is beautiful, her body stretches, bends and arches with the tone and grace of an animal. And when she discards her shift, she moves with that lack of self consciousness and engagement that obviates desire. It is the artist who seems self conscious. He is shown holding a zebra... Read more »
The dangerous politics of love.
The seventeenth century was a bad time for women. They had no autonomy, no rights. They were treated as the property of men; they had to obey their husbands and fathers. Fathers would promise their daughters to men they didn’t love for political advantage. Husbands would keep their wives locked... Read more »
A Habit of Art
Do writers tend to write more about themselves as they get older? I guess they do. Art, literature, musical composition is projection; an expression of aspects of the self. This applies to all creative activity; the world seen through the filter of personal experience. It tells us more about the... Read more »
Love and Glory; the wondrous madness of it all.
'It’s still the same old story; a fight for love and glory; a case of do or die.’ It is 1885 and there’s trouble in the Balkans – as usual! Sergius, so ambitious for glory, leads a foolhardy cavalry charge against the Serbian machine guns. He’s not to know that the... Read more »
Was Dr Johnson mad? Aren’t we all?
He was a most strange looking man, much bigger than average and rather stout. Slovenly, dishevelled, deaf, almost blind with myopia; he slobbered, he dribbled, was host to all manner of people, and his personal cleanliness left much to be desired. In truth, he stank. And he had a variety... Read more »
Running from women with reindeer and other obsessions.
The U boats lay in wait for us as soon as we rounded North Cape. There was only a narrow passage between the tundra and the ice, and as they closed in on the convoy underwater, Stukas from their Norwegian bases, dive bombed us from above. It was hell! The... Read more »
Life expressed in water.
Our world and everything in it including ourselves has been shaped by water. Yet how much do we understand it. Left to itself, water approximates to a sphere, circular currents bounded by surface tension, but when subjected to gravity, then the circular forces in the water turn the flow into... Read more »
In search of meaning
‘To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. If there is any purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is. Each must find out for himself, and... Read more »
Can you miss Angkor Wat?
You cannot go to Cambodia and not see Angkor Wat, Suzanne responded, wide eyed and incredulous that I could even think about it. But I wasn’t so sure. Maybe it was the tourist thing. I don’t like being shown around by a guide, the same inane chatter, the same non-... Read more »
Climate change; the role of the artist.
What role does an artist have in the debate about the environment? Surely it all depends on scientific data and predictions. The solution must be based on interpretation of evidence and engineering solutions, mustn’t it? But it is not as easy as all that. There are so many factors to... Read more »
Existential emptiness; the tragi-comedy of McEwan’s Solar.
You see people like Michael Baird all the time at scientific conferences; pudgy, balding, slightly unkempt, full of their own self importance. But Baird, like many academics, was a lazy man; a one discovery wonder. As an Oxford post-doc, he revised one of Einstein’s theories, an achievement of brilliance that... Read more »
Beauty with Balls; an appreciation of Ingrid Bergman
I think I was in love with her from the start as she gazed steadily at me with moist lips and knowing eyes from the flickering monochrome screens of such classics as Casablanca, Notorious, Spellbound, The Bells of St Mary’s, and For whom the bell tolls. Her face expressed vulnerability and innocence,... Read more »
Hey,hey, LBJ! How many kids have you killed today?
Mao Tse Tung said “first the mountains, then the countryside, then the cities.” But he left out the fourth: the home front. If you can attack the enemy at their soft under-belly, their home front, using behavioural psychology, stirring up feelings against the immorality of war, then this is a... Read more »
Charmed! The irresistable attractions of Violet Gordon Woodhouse.
Some women just have it, that magic; the ability to evoke adoration in others. Violet did. How else could she make four men fall in love with her so deeply that they devoted their lives to her. First there was Gordon, whom she married, then Bill, the love of her... Read more »
The dread of feeling too much; Edvard Munch and his women
‘I was out walking with two friends. The sun began to set. Suddenly the sky turned blood red. I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence. There was blood and tongues of fire above the blue black fjord and the city. My friends walked on and I stood there... Read more »
Dulce et decorum est …..
Have you read ‘All quiet on the western front?’ I hadn’t until this week. It is a remarkable work, shocking, poignant but at the same time uplifting and hopeful. It’s a story of survival, but all war stories are of survival. Remarque’s novel tells it you feel it really was;... Read more »
When honour is betrayed
It is 1918, the Bolsheviks have taken over in Russia and sued for peace, Germany has annexed Ukraine and installed a pro-tsarist puppet government under Skoropadsky, the Hetman, but Tsa Nikolai II and his family have been murdered in Ekaterinberg. The remnants of the old White Guard have migrated to... Read more »
Visionary or Disaster; a perspective on William Sargant
We don’t hear very much about William Sargant now, but in his day, he was the most eminent figure in British psychiatry, a large man with a leonine profile and convictions as strong as his character; somebody you obeyed and never argued with. David Owen, one time British foreign secretary,... Read more »
Theo van Gogh; holding the lonely madness of genius.
Vincent van Gogh is all too often seen as the mad genius who created masterpieces while in a state of ecstacy and infatuation, the man who cut off his ear in despair and took his own life, but that is a distortion. He was more an intensely driven man, awkward... Read more »
All the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been , lives in a dream, waits at the window wearing the face that she’s kept in a jar by the door. What is it for? All the lonely people, where do they all come from? All the lonely... Read more »
Dido’s enduring grievance.
She was devastated. After all she had come through, how could the Gods allow it to happen? Wasn’t she still grieving for her husband, Sychaeus, killed for his money by her own brother, Pygmalion. Hadn’t she had to take the gold and leave her home in Phoenicia at the dead... Read more »
The trainspotter’s guide to survival and forgiveness
What was it about Eric Lomax that enabled him to survive the most extreme imprisonment and torture when so many of his colleagues died? What strength of character allowed him to return to normal job in Edinburgh after such devastating trauma? And how could he actually bring himself to forgive... Read more »
It’s a Dog’s Life!
‘A dog is a man’s best friend’, so they say. They are our companions. They are, like us, social carnivores that hunt in the daylight. We were made to collaborate. How much more effective we would have been as hunters with dogs to detect and chase our prey. And dogs... Read more »
Cries and Whispers
I first experienced Cries and Whispers in 1973. I was, even then, drawn to the deeper, darker aspects of human psychology. It was no wonder, therefore, that I was into Bergman. I rated the Seventh Seal and Persona as the greatest films I had seen. Then came Cries and Whispers. And now,... Read more »
When the dream fades, kill it off!
Frank and April Wheeler had it all. They were a charmed couple, or so it seemed to their neighbours and friends. He was virile and handsome, a whizz in the city, she was beautiful and an actress. They owned a pretty clapperboard house in the leafy suburbs. They had two... Read more »
Haunted! ‘Trauma’ and McGrath’s ghosts.
Charlie is a psychiatrist, an expert on trauma. His marriage to Agnes broke up after her brother, Danny, committed suicide. Danny was a Vietnamese veteran whose buddy was killed by a booby trap device right next to him. He was also Charlie’s patient. He blew his brains out after Charlie... Read more »
Rewriting the story
Our spirit or soul is like a book upon which we write the story of our life; a narrative that explains our attitudes and beliefs, accounts for our actions and may mitigate our misdemeanours. It’s our personal identity, how we see ourselves. It doesn’t have to be based on what... Read more »
Of families, fathers and forgiveness in the whimsical world of Wes
What kind of person are you? Since when have you been so perfect? When did you last fuck up? What are you going to do about it? Royale Tennenbaum has been evicted from his family by his wife, Etheline, for playing around. He is casual, careless even as he explains it... Read more »
Of daughters, damage and destruction; is that the legacy of Mrs Klein?
Melanie Klein might be said to have founded the British School of Psychoanalysis, though it was never as formal as that. There was a never a ‘concrete school’ more a movement dominated by the ideas and interpretations of Mrs Klein. Psychoanalysis was (and still is) very incestuous. There were not many... Read more »
Dr Haggard’s Disease
It was 1937; and there was trouble on the horizon. They recognized each other at a funeral. There was a spark. Then they found they were sitting next to each other at the Cushing’s dinner party. He was Dr Edward Haggard, house surgeon at St Basil’s and a bit of... Read more »
In praise of uncertainty.
The Archbishop of York, John Hapgood, once famously declared that ‘the lust for certainty was a sin.’ This statement was surprising, shocking even, coming from the second most important churchman in the country; a man who engaged with the ‘certainty’ of God. We live in an uncertain world. We can never... Read more »
How to keep your shape when all about are losing theirs; is there an answer to the obesity epidemic?
For the last twenty years, we have been getting noticeably fatter. Rates of obesity in America and Western Europe have more than doubled since the nineteen eighties. And the problem shows no sign of diminishing. If trends continue, it has been estimated by 2050, one in two adults and one... Read more »
Madly in love
When her husband, Max, is appointed director of an asylum in Essex, Stella is not overjoyed. She is bored; ‘dying of chronic neglect’. She resents the restrictions of her position and the limited perspectives of the other wives. To relieve the monotony, she develops an attraction to Edgar, a handsome... Read more »
Spider
He is the last off the train. He looks lost, wary, an alien from another world. He stops, picks up an object from the edge of a puddle, examines it and puts it in his pocket. Everything about him is strange. He doesn’t so much walk but shuffle, keeping close... Read more »
Back to Basics
The cottage peers anxiously over the terrace wall to where the road leaves the rushing Esk and winds up the hill to the rocky platform upon which the Romans built their marching fort and complained about the rain. Then the focus is taken up again, up the repeating green slope... Read more »
Capturing the Look of Love; Waterhouse’s Women.
The long neck is bent, the skin pale, the gaze serious and sustained, sad yet determined, the lips are slightly parted, the body lithe, nubile, not a child but not yet a woman. Waterhouse's depictions of women express an ambiguity, an inscrutability, a mysterious, thoughtful reflection that enthrals and captivates.... Read more »
Towards the vanishing point.
I had some pizza that I made the previous night and thought to share that and the remains of a bottle of claret with her. But she is not right. Julie has told me that she gets very emotional at the prospect of me coming round. I have recently begun... Read more »
Failing Better.
'Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.' Samuel Beckett Don't give up! Learn from your mistakes. Do better next time. Remember Robert Bruce and the spider, Alfred and the cakes. Just pick yourself up, dust yourself down and start all over again. That seems be the message... Read more »
Not so much a Dame as a Sheila!
I was the first candidate after lunch. I waited nervously outside sister's office. The lady arrived late and loud, flanked by two co-examiners, who were chuckling politely. She glanced at her clipboard and announced briskly; 'Now, Dr Read, examine this man's chest.' I carefully went through the procedure, inspection, palpation, percussion, auscult......... 'Hurry... Read more »
Nature cure; a case of living in the moment.
When I read Richard Mabey's book, Nature Cure, I could feel the how removing himself to a cottage in Norfolk for several months cured him of the ennuie and depression that had afflicted him after completing the mammoth enterprise of Flora Brittanica. The book was like a course of treatment,... Read more »
A cabin in the forest.
I have always yearned for a space to write, my own space, a place where I could close the door away from the obligations and responsibilities and just think and be. . It was just a few yards from the river, on it's own small peninsula, where the dark stream from... Read more »
If you go down to the woods today …….
Dark eyed, tired, seemingly bored with life, they lumber salivating out of the forest dark, enticed by the sound of the tractor and the scent of one hundred kilograms of salmon hidden under logs in four caches. Ursus arctos may have a muzzle like a dog, but it also bears some... Read more »
It’s summer; so follow the geese, go north!
Exhausted with the pressure of work, the bustle and clutter of city life? Then don't head for the crowded beaches of the Mediterranean, follow the geese; go north to Finland. Arola farm is in the region of Eastern Finland known as Suomussalmi, just south of the Arctic Circle and within sight... Read more »
Show! Don’t tell! An appraisal of The Reader.
Show! Don't tell! Let the reader decide why the characters behave as they do. Keep them guessing. It's what can turn a good book into a great one. But, to be honest, I didn't think The Reader was a great book when I first read it about three months ago. ... Read more »
Death, desire and despair at the Odioun; the pholly of Phedre
She has desired Hippolytus since the day she married his father. Proud, aloof, disdainful of women; he has all the strength of the father but none of his sire's weakness for sexual temptation, or so it seems. He is a real challenge. She has to possess him, but Hippolytus is... Read more »
It’s not all straightforward in Arcadia
Arcadia is perhaps Tom Stoppard's best play. Its eclectic blend of literary history and science bubbles and fizzes with ideas and wit. Stoppard not only explores the shifting mindscapes between between science and literature, he tackles the divisions between classicism and romanticism, and deterministic and unpredictable theories of the universe.... Read more »
Doing things by the book; the flawed excellence of the new NHS.
I should have listened to her dentist. She cared enough to call me in London and tell me that the Xray had shown a small translucency around the root of the bottom right canine and there was a sinus pointing to the gum. 'Your mum will need that tooth out,'... Read more »
Losing her Mind; How can we understand Dementia
'Oh Nick, Oh Nick! Please! Please!' 'What is it mum?' 'I don't know. It's all gone wrong.' 'Try to rest, mum.' 'But I'm so hot!' I take the blanket off her. 'My feet are so cold.' I put her slippers on. 'Oh these are too heavy. Take them off.' I remove them. 'My mouth is so dry.' 'Shall I make you... Read more »
The Curious Intimacy of the Shag
'The common Cormorant or Shag Lays its eggs in a paper bag.' So wrote Christopher Isherwood, but he was wrong on both counts. The common Cormorant is not the same bird as the Shag. It is much bigger and has a white patch below its beak and under its belly. The Shag is... Read more »
Duet for one; the destructive narcissism of the performer
Stephanie was a virtuoso violinist until she was struck down with multiple sclerosis. Now her fingering is clumsy, her bowing uneven, her music sounds scratchy and discordant. She can’t do it anymore. She is destroyed. Music was her whole life. It was her joy... Read more »
Spoilt!
When I was growing up, the worst thing you could be was ‘spoilt’. My parents would point at other children and say, wrinkling their upper lips with disgust. ‘And he’s another spoilt brat.’ Being spoilt was a dreadful sin and not one of your own causing but... Read more »
In the eye of our mind
Human existence is nothing is not meaningful. The brain works in metaphor and meaning. We surround ourselves with symbols that represent aspects of our identity. We use mental imagery to make sense of our experience through the creation of internal objects, psychological representations that flesh out... Read more »
Lost to emotion; does the way we feel control the way we think?
‘My thoughts change like the weather. When the sun is shining, I feel excited, optimistic. I can see a way through. We will work things out and it will be fine. Then a cloud passes across the face of the sun, a shadow of doubt and... Read more »
From Mount Wehni to Kentish Town
‘They say you will all die!’ Mulu’s cries add a chill to the low afternoon sun. The villagers had been on the hillside opposite the ambo, the basaltic stele that we were attempting to scale, all day, laughing and shouting cries of encouragement. But now it was late, night was imminent and... Read more »
