A Playlist: Better Days Ahead
As ‘the new normal’ expands into the summer, John Hopkins curates a further playlist, offering a glimpse of better times to come.
Don’t write your essays like this
Richard Toye - historian and scholar of rhetoric - has been writing a book aimed at helping students succeed academically. Here he gives us an insider’s preview…
The ties that bind: pregnancy and heart disease
Clare Oliver-Williams is investigating links between pregnancy and heart disease, and finds good news and a challenge
Henry Moore, Hill Arches, 1960
In lockdown, themes of protection and incarceration are in tension. Are children ‘safe at home’, or ‘stuck at home’? Philip Stephenson explains how Henry Moore explored those themes in bronze.
Paintings for our times: Brueghel's Village Festival
Lamenting the loss of the Cambridge Beer Festival, Philip Stephenson draws inspiration from Brueghel’s festival-goers, in his latest commentary on the Fitzwilliam Museum’s collection
What social distancing taught me about plumbing
David Clifford does prolonged battle with a leak, reluctant plumbers, reluctant social distancers, and his sense of his own DIY capabilities.
Paintings for our times: Nicholson’s Armistice Night, 1918
Philip Stephenson’s series of commentaries on art from the Fitzwilliam Museum continues with a reflection on VE Day 1945 and its resonances with the Armistice, as depicted by Sir William Nicholson RA in 1918.
A Playlist: For These Distracted Times
Inspired by Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656), John Hopkins has curated a playlist ‘for these distracted times’, from his own compositions and others’.
Star Wars: Dystopia and New Hope
To launch the Homersphere and to mark international Star Wars Day, we asked Bye-Fellow Robin Bunce to write about the franchise and its considerations of utopia and dystopia. May the fourth be with you all!
Turning the tide? Rhetorical lessons for Boris Johnson from WWII
Richard Toye recommends five lessons that Boris Johnson should take from his hero Winston Churchill, as he treats Covid-19 as the defining war of his premiership
Miriam & Youssef: the story of the foundation of Israel
Homersphere’s first exclusive! Steve Waters tells us about his new radio drama Miriam & Youssef, which over 10 episodes explores the foundation of the modern state of Israel.
Finding God online
Religion, like many other aspects of life, is moving online in response to lockdown. As Ramadan begins, Beth Singler joins a Radio 4 panel to discuss religion online, and online religion
A tropical lockdown miscellany
Richard Hickman, academic and artist, is stuck in Singapore. Locked down and bored, he writes on his surroundings, and illustrates his thoughts with his own paintings, new and old
Poetic forms and musical titles
John Hopkins, Emeritus Fellow in Music, was challenged by a pianist to create a composition based on one of poetry’s most elaborate forms - only to find an unexpected marketing difficulty…
Why do humans dream of electric slaves?
In 2019, the year in which Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner was set, Beth Singler wrote and presented this essay for BBC Radio 3.
Endnotes: David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace wrote "morally passionate, passionately moral fiction" that aimed to help the reader "become less alone inside”. This 2011 radio programme on Wallace was written and presented by Geoff Ward.
Paintings for our times: The Annunciation, Domenico Veneziano, 1447
Philip Stephenson considers ‘spiritual distancing’ in the Annunciation by Veneziano
Paintings for our times: Seurat’s Île de la Grande Jatte
Philip Stephenson considers echoes of characters across two paintings by Georges Seurat