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Drinks With Dead Poets: The Autumn Term by Glyn Maxwell – review

Part comic novel, part criticism, part autobiography … and wholly brilliant evocation of a mysterious university campus, its students and visiting lecturersPoetry is a pitiless mistress. How else could...

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Poster poems: hope

Amid so many ominous events in the wider world, writing poetry is a small but significant way to sustain our spirits. For one last time, please share yoursIn his great inverted sonnet Work Without...

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Why Marlene Dietrich’s witty marginalia only add to her appeal | Steven Poole

Coleridge and Joe Orton famously scribbled in the margins of books – so the acting great is in good companyTo the many reasons we have for admiring Marlene Dietrich can now be added the fact that she...

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How did 18th century’s literary women relieve domestic distress? With opiates

It wasn’t just men such as Coleridge and De Quincey who took drugs, study of Mary Robinson and Harriet Martineau revealsThe fantastical poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the scandalous journal of...

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge's remains rediscovered in wine cellar

Exact location of the poet’s coffin had been forgotten until recent excavation uncovered the vaultIt probably wouldn’t have surprised his long-suffering friends, but the remains of the poet Samuel...

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Everyone looks at pictures of puppies | Brief letters

Parliament and Syria | Dostoyevsky at the movies | Uses of dogs | Coleridge remains | Wills and smokingWe have only a nominal democracy if a prime minister can wage a war of aggression and potentially...

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Out of my mind: Sarah Perry on writing under the influence of drugs

When a medical condition left her in agony, The Essex Serpent author was prescribed powerful opiates. They gave her terrifying visions - and a new insight into literary drug cultureThe poet Mary...

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Country diary: A wild walk to Llangynog, in the footsteps of Coleridge – Jim...

Llangynog, Powys: Bluebell leaves are emerging through the bracken and parsley fern adorns the scree-slopesMore than just indolence kept me dawdling over beer and chips in the Tanat Inn. Imagination’s...

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The Making of Poetry by Adam Nicolson review – when Coleridge met the...

This investigation into the birth of the Romantic movement is the perfect marriage of poetry and placeIn the 21st century, the creative act of authorship is the magic moment of the liberated and...

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The Making of Poetry by Adam Nicholson review – Coleridge and Wordsworth's year

How a year spent in the Quantocks and a clash of personalities produced some world famous poemsWilliam Hazlitt recorded many peculiarities of his teenage idol Samuel Taylor Coleridge, among which was...

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Rural idyll where Ancient Mariner met Kubla Khan saved for nation

Mystery buyer is snapping up the home where Coleridge and Wordsworth composed some of their greatest worksThe dilapidated Grade II West Country home where William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge...

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Top 10 random encounters in literature

Landmark meetings in Dickens and Joyce, and textual collisions in surrealism and poetry, remind us how central surprise is to the best writingColeridge once described poetry as “wild ducks shaping...

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All alone online: Iggy Pop and Jeremy Irons lead mass Ancient Mariner reading

Streaming daily, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 2020 incarnation also features Marianne Faithfull and Tilda Swinton as readers, set against sound and fine art“Alone, alone, all, all alone.” The cry of the...

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Why Willem Dafoe, Iggy Pop and more are reading The Rime of the Ancient...

Slavery, ecocide, plague ... the warnings of Coleridge’s poem resound down the ages. Now 40 actors, musicians and authors are performing in a daily mass-readingRoaring out of the radical 1790s, The...

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From wars to wages: how the word 'furlough' gained currency

Workers during the coronavirus crisis are not the first to find themselves ‘furloughed’Thanks to the coronavirus job retention scheme, many employees have been “furloughed” on 80% of their salary...

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Phantom or Fact: A Dialogue in Verse by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Written towards the end of the poet’s life, this mysterious exchange shows him reflecting on the ‘spirit’ he has lostPhantom or Fact: A Dialogue in VerseAuthorA lovely form there sate beside my bed,And...

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The Guardian view on contemplative silence: there’s a lot to be said for it |...

English Heritage is trialling a daily hour of stillness and reflection at its monastic sites. It is a bold experiment that deserves to succeedIn The Cloud of Unknowing, one of the greatest works of...

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The Guardian view on William Blake’s cottage: don’t let it crumble | Editorial

Artists’ homes are precious for the things they tell us about the lives and times of those who worked in themHistoric England has sounded an alarm. A cottage William Blake once lived in, in Felpham,...

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In Somerset did Kubla Khan: Coleridge manuscript returns to poem’s source

Taunton welcomes handwritten version of work poet said came to him after drug-induced reverie in nearby farmhouseMore than two centuries after Samuel Taylor Coleridge awoke from a drug-addled reverie –...

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From Romantics to 21st century radicals: Coleridge, Shelley and the roots of...

Communes are on the rise, but we’ve been here before – more than 200 years ago Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his poet friends were pinning their hopes on the collective goodFriends who have lived in...

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