As you might have noticed from the Links section in my side bar, as well as from my profile, I’m a fan of Serge Gainsbourg. The first time I heard him, I was just as innocent as France Gall (who...
There must be some curse that doesn’t let me see La Belle et la Bête by Jean Cocteau. Every time it’s on TV I either forget or cannot find time to watch it. Naturally, when I received an e...
One of my favourite paintings is The Lovers by Rene Magritte. We see a man and a woman sharing an intimate kiss, but their faces are covered with white cloths. You can certainly interpret this as an i...
The sheet music to a popular madrigal O Felici Occhi Miei by Diego Ortiz and Jacob Arcadelt can be seen in The Musicians by Caravaggio...
The poem that you’ll find below bears no dedication, although it would never have been written, had I not been driven to learn more about Portugal last summer. My interest was sparkled by the wo...
Recently I’ve discovered the works of Edna St Vincent Millay, and I have already briefly analysed one of her sonnets here. I’ve also translated her poem, Thursday, from A Few Figs from Thi...
Here is my attempt to save us all from this depression, be that from mild weather or from rattling winds. The BBC report about radio reshuffle has reminded me of a lovely fairy tale by Hans Christian ...
Although Robin has suggested that I should write an Ordsall Hall article for Wikipedia, I didn’t do this yet. Instead I have recently found a lecture read in the fall of 2006 at the University o...
On December 28, 1895, at the Grand Cafe on Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, the Lumière brothers screened their first film. Since then, cinema has entered our everyday life. Today different directors...
This is the title of the first chapter of Umberto Eco’s Mouse or Rat: Translation as Negotiation (L.: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2003). The plants (or factories) in question are, in fact, the wor...