Articles written by David Elliott in Arts & Humanities

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About me - David Elliott

I hit fifty this year, incredibly enough as I thought I was still nineteen. The doctor casually informed me the other week that I'd 'have to start being careful', though he didn't specify about what. If he was referring to drinking then he can bugger off,

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Arts & Humanities > Classical Lit & Mythology The odyssey of the Odyssey: 3 of 6
The Odyssey, even more than that other great legacy of the ancients, the Iliad, has suffused and indeed shaped Western culture as no other book apart from the Bible has managed to do. Poets, artists and philosophers have been referring to its abiding images and truths about human nature since Homer first dreamed the story up... More..
Arts & Humanities > Classical Lit & Mythology Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy Texts: 2 of 4
Dante's Divine Comedy is the story of the soul's journey from the depths of despair to pure enlightenment, and you don't have to be a Catholic or even religious to be awed and inspired by it. If you ignore all the academic dust that has settled on this astounding creation over the seven hundred years since it was written, an... More..
Arts & Humanities > Historical Literature Book reviews: War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy: 1 of 1
War and Peace is a huge tent of a novel that hangs off just a few poles, these being three main families: the Rostovs, the Bolkonskys and the Bezukovs. It is set at the time of Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and the year 1812 is the primary axis around which the characters and events circle, and from which they derive their ... More..
Arts & Humanities > British Literature Book reviews: The Surgeon of Crowthorne, by Simon Winchester: 1 of 1
Originally published in England as The Surgeon of Crowthorne a tale of murder, madness and the Oxford English Dictionary', this book is for me chiefly remarkable for including my own personal recurring fantasy. I'm not talking about the murder and madness bit, but rather about the two adjoining cells at Broadmoor which were ... More..
Arts & Humanities > American Literature Short story reviews: Cathedral, by Robert Carver: 1 of 1
The narrator of this typically short, sparely written tale is expecting an old, blind friend of his wife's to come to visit them for a few days. She hasn't seen him in ten years, since she worked for him one summer, and she is very excited about it. The friend has recently lost his wife to cancer. His dead wife had been her ... More..
Arts & Humanities > Classical Lit & Mythology Literary review: The Iliad, by Homer: 1 of 1
The Iliad was written down probably in the 6th century BC by a Greek poet (or poets) known to us only as Homer', though it had certainly been an oral tradition for a long time before that. The poem's subject matter is the war between the Greeks and Trojans, set off by the elopement to Helen of Troy - daughter of the Greek Ki... More..
Arts & Humanities > International Writers & Literature Book reviews: Mysteries, by Knut Hamsun: 1 of 1
Henry Miller described Mysteries as closer to me than any other book I have read'. I'm no Henry Miller, but it is a very dear book to me too, quite like a close friend. It seems that there is no getting to the bottom of it, no matter how many times you engage with it, just like a human being. On a first reading it is seems a... More..
Arts & Humanities > British Literature Book reviews: Fu Manchu, by Sax Rohmer: 1 of 1
Sax Rohmer was the pen name of the English writer Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward (1883-1959), a prolific producer of pulp fiction and comedy sketches for music hall performers. He was one of the highest paid and most successful writers of the twenties and thirties, due largely to his Fu Manchu series. Reissued in two fat volume... More..
Arts & Humanities > British Literature Book reviews: A Sentimental Journey, by Laurence Sterne: 1 of 1
Written in the rambling, laconic but clearly deliberate and perfectly modulated style which Sterne got down to a fine art in Tristram Shandy', A Sentimental Journey' is the loose journal of the lonely and very English Parson Yorick on a trip through France in the mid-Eighteenth century. The book is made up of short chapters ... More..
Arts & Humanities > History of Ideas Michele de Montaigne, medieval philosopher and essayist: 1 of 1
Michel de Montaigne (1533 1592) is famous for shutting himself away in a book-lined tower in 1572 and assaying his thoughts and opinions, essentially attempting to discover what, if anything, he really knew about himself and the human condition. Descartes attempted the same sort of venture in 1637 in his three Discourses, pr... More..