In Restless Human Hearts (1875), after their trial marriage and disappointing continental trip, Neville and Georgiana are reflecting separately on the concern they feel about their future: Georgie wants the ‘transports of love’ she and Neville had at the beginning of their relationship, while Neville requires something else. “I think,” said Neville, speaking in a […]
I continue my exploration of the work of Hilaire Belloc in a determined effort to discover why, since many of his beliefs are so inimical to me, he continues to have a very special place in my intellectual life. He would no doubt have defined me as somebody possessed of a ‘…one-legged, knock-kneed, gimcrack, purblind, […]
For nearly seventy years I’ve been what I suppose could be called a Belloc-fanatic. The question is – How could that be the case when he was a died-in-the-wool Roman Catholic, of an anti-pacifist, anti-vegetarian persuasion? I think I must have just relegated all that (on his account) to the category ‘unthink’, and (for myself) […]
For solace and enthusiasm, I’ve been re-reading HGWells’ The Outlook for Homo [so-called] Sapiens. He says he hammers at his main ideas which ‘offends delicate-minded people’ but has always attempted to resolve contradictions, struggled for effective knowledge, working ‘not simply for knowledge but for stark clarity of thought about it…’ All it’s possible to do […]
I sent a good friend a copy of my Room Twelve. He thanked me for it and said, ‘I already dipped in – and it is as WONDERFUL as all the others…’ He asked, ‘How do you do it?’ while suggesting that it was a silly, unworthy and unanswerable question… HOW DO I DO IT? […]
Sometime in the 1940’s somehow I stumbled upon a radio programme called The Brains Trust. I think my mother perhaps used to listen to it. This must have been before 1948 because I was upset by media enthusiasm when, on 12th April 1948, Professor CEM Joad (1891-1953), a key figure in the programme, was convicted […]
For some years I’ve had on my ‘To Read’ shelves a book called ‘The New Age under Orage’ by Wallace Martin (Manchester University Press 1967). I bought it because of AR Orage’s connection with Gurdjieff and thought it might throw some light on another who, like Maurice Nicoll – mentioned briefly in the book – […]
FOR EVERYBODY DISTURBED BY CURRENT WORLD EVENTS I have a tatty First Edition of a book by the prescient HGWells, published in 1931, called WHAT ARE WE TO DO WITH OUR LIVES? Its contents underwent several revisions by Wells himself but it might as well have been written yesterday as the first paragraph shows very […]
As is usual for my Globs or Essays, this one tends to be rather lengthy and it’s only an introduction to an even longer one! Here’s an outline:- The issue is about devising a practical Plan of Action to counteract the lurch towards what can be called ‘Fascism’. 1. We could sit back and do […]
Thoughts on and a review of HGWells’ The Croquet Player… What do you feel about the scary crisis of existing in the world as it has become in this glorious New Millennium? Daily news of devastating explosions in market places or at wedding ceremonies, the collecting of blown-apart body parts in sacks, global terrorist activity, […]
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