by Nigel Scotchmer | Aug 18, 2023 | Essays
If you haven’t seen it yet, Happy Valley is a television series you should see. The last of the series just ended so I want to promote it before it disappears under another surfeit of maudlin Disney rehashes which seem to never stop. You really do want to stay up...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Aug 18, 2023 | Art
Shelley’s sonnet Ozymandias uses the Greek name for Ramesses II, the most famous of Egyptian pharaohs, and was written as a great statute of him was in transit to the British Museum in a wave of awe and Orientalism sweeping Europe. The poem captures both the power...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Aug 11, 2023 | Essays
When I was young, there was a bare patch under some tall and shady basswood trees (I called them ‘lollipop trees’, as that is what they looked like) where regular grass just didn’t want to grow. So, I started to play mud games with the hose. While my brothers were...