Peter Dann

Ensnared by the divorce laws of his time, Soames Forsyte is cast as both villain and victim in Part 2 of Galsworthy's sprawling Forstye Saga. My free reading of In Chancery is now on Librivox: librivox.org/in-chancery-...

Galsworthy claimed his subject was "the inroads of beauty and passion", but it is surely the darker forces of passion that truly catch his imagination. My free reading of "The Man of Property" is out now: librivox.org/the-man-of-p...

Democratic superpower (Athens 431 BCE) catastrophically over-reaches itself. Plus ça change. My reading of Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War is now a free audiobook on Librivox: librivox.org/history-of-t...

Couldn’t say yes. Couldn’t say sorry. So appropriate Senator Prince is now spokesperson for absolutely nothing.

Noddle-head decides he is a knight-errant, and asks local farm labourer to accompany him. Cervantes milks his premise with great skill, creating much warm-hearted silliness and slapstick. My free reading is now at librivox.org/don-quixote-...

And while you’re at it: 🪝Dangle your modifiers like a Tyburn executioner

Just realised “unclear” is only a single (accidental?) letter transposition away from “nuclear”. Hope there’s been no smartarse spell-checker at work in some of those “top secret” Signal groups we’ve heard about lately.

Peetotaller: one who has sworn off drinking in the evening in order to reduce night visits to the bathroom.

Did Nicholas John Turner anticipate publishers might turn down his marvellous yet challenging Let The Boys Play? It so happens his working title THY SONS MAKE PILLAGE (from Titus Andronicus) is an anagram of NO SHALT LIKE MY PAGES.

If there is any justice in the cosmos, Donald Trump will be required to spend eternity bound to a card table playing poker with Volodymyr Zelensky. Let's see then who's better at counting cards.

Silly me. Whether or not THY SONS MAKE PILLAGE (the original title of Nicholas Turner's "Let the Boys Play") is a decipherable anagram, it is certainly from Act 2 Scene 3 of Shakespeare's gore-fest Titus Andronicus. Philomel's tongue turns up in LTBP on p. 84. @thebookdesk.bsky.social

If LET THY SONS MAKE PILLAGE (original title of Nicholas John Turner’s “Let the Boys Play”) is in fact an anagram, solution GAS KILLS NEOPHYTE MA would at least fit content of last chapter. (This might-or-might-not-be puzzle is driving me nuts!) @thebookdesk.bsky.social

Question 1, children: The gap under a bridge is 4 metres. You are driving a van which is 5 metres tall…

Nicholas John Turner's "Let the Boys Play" is a certainly a stunning display of literary pyrotechnics. It is also, though, an intricately wrought masterpiece of defamiliarisation just crying out to be decoded. Thank you, @thebookdesk.bsky.social www.peterdannauthor.com/let-the-boys...

So, should I, or should I not… … celery sacrifice?

My day is now officially “made”.

If there was one thing Jonathan Swift loved more dearly than a good poop or a kind horse, it was skewering the foibles and pride of his fellow man. My free reading of Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” is now available at librivox.org/gullivers-tr...

This guy’s already fabricated one Golden Dome. Now he wants another??

Jonathan Swift's Gulliver views a means by which "the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study." Sound familiar?

George Borrow's "The Romany Rye" (1857) continues "Lavengro" to form a highly readable work whose mingling of fiction, travelogue, autobiography and invective now sounds strangely contemporary. My new (free) reading is at librivox.org/the-romany-r...

Simile, like you’re on Candid Camera.

President Tantrump

The term “politically correct” did not exist when George Borrow published “The Romany Rye” in 1857, but he certainly suspected that contemporary authors might be drawn to promote certain positions on account of their modish popularity.

Can't say I've ever mastered the German language, but I should be able to get this much straight, at least. Is the whole point of a bildungsroman, then, that Rome wasn't built in a day?

Hungarian equerry addressing narrator of "The Romany Rye", by George Borrow, who prose Gerald Murnane so admires. As it happens, I've actually seen the cribs bearing English on one side, Hungarian on the other, in a certain filing cabinet in Goroke. Just coincidence?

Caligula's horse had more gravitas between its hind legs than the great statesmen named in the first line of this bizarre headline today.

Around when Gerald Murnane turned 10, his father's gambling debts caused great upheaval in his family. Here, in George Borrow's "The Romany Rye", "the jockey" describes a similar situation. Murnane admired Borrow's prose style — but may have had other grounds for sympathy too?

Was Gerald Murnane influenced by George Borrow beyond admiring his style? In "Romany Rye", the narrator discusses Hungarian history at length with a Hungarian to whom he has just sold a horse. Hungary looms large in "Inland", and Murnane taught himself Hungarian. Co-incidence?

“The witch hunt” is one of the most exciting (and terrifying) episodes in H. Rider Haggard’s “King Solomon’s Mines”. Posting this today, within 24 hours of the Washington air disaster, for no particular reason at all…

Wow! So this is what true leadership looks like, huh?

With this critical observation concerning his central character Dominic, is Martin Boyd kissing a blythe farewell to half his potential readership? From “When Blackbirds Sing”.

A young (English) turd evaluating the prospect of marrying and taking “home” a young Australian woman circa 1912, in Martin Boyd’s mostly sedate but occasionally LOL funny “Outbreak of Love”.

For all his emphasis on the “wit” of the Langton family, Martin Boyd’s Guy Langton himself rarely shows the sharpish form of wit evident here. From “Outbreak of Love”.

If there’s ONE thing I try to believe in very hard by this time each Christmas Day, it would have to be in a happy afterlife for whatever ends up here.

I see in my classical dictionary that μοῖρα (Moira) can mean “division of a people” and “man’s appointed doom, or fate”. Who’d have guessed?

Eat your heart out, Joseph Banks. Two hundred and fifty years of plant classification science have brought us to this…

How long before we see “Irredeemable” in a headline, I wonder.

Amongst other things, this “funeral director” was convicted of mixing up two bodies, one for burial, the other for cremation. His explanation” of his past just screams Chat GPT.

One of the passages, presumably, feeding the “conjecture” (Wikipedia) about Martin Boyd’s sexual orientation. From “A Difficult Young Man”.

The shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” So they hurried off and they found…

“Virtue signalling”?

App for The Age newspaper has gone full multicultural — or a boo-boo by the work experience student?

From Martin Boyd’s semi-autobiographical account in “A Difficult Young Man” of an event circa 1910 in England involving a retired British colonel. The price of Empire!

If a married person has enough affairs, does it eventually become adulltery?

The eponymous hero of "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" has his failings, but this tale of his early life and dreams is laced with great wit and lively repartee, qualities I hope I have done justice in my new (free) reading on Librivox: librivox.org/the-history-...

Sonia Hartnett’s introduction to the Text edition of Martin Boyd’s “A Difficult Young Man” is so markedly narky in tone at times I am surprised the publisher chose to include it. As intros to classic novels go, this one is a hell of a downer.

Hot damn! And I could have sworn it was yesterday.

Classic plot line, really: animal trainer with near-mystical powers struggles to overcome sore throat.