This automated poetry-writing computer system is so good that most readers 'strongly prefer' its verses to those of Shakespeare. Or at any rate, that's what its creator claims. Jonathan Law investigates... On a bone-cold day in March the Wikiworm brought us some much needed cheer by digging out “The Bookseller/Diagram Prize ... Read More...
About Author Profile: Jonathan Law
Following his post on the folk singer Shelagh McDonald, Jonathan Law continues his occasional series on artists who have vanished into thin air with a look at a strange and possibly brilliant poet... If you’ve ever come across the work of Rosemary Tonks, then I think I might hazard a guess ... Read More...
Jonathan Law returns to The Dabbler with the first in an occasional series looking at people who chose to disappear... Here he tells the remarkable tale of folk singer Shelagh McDonald... Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand, As epitaph: He chucked up everything And just cleared off, And always the voice will sound Certain you approve This audacious, purifying, Elemental ... Read More...
The lead article in the current issue of the excellent Slightly Foxed quarterly magazine is by none other than our own Jonathan Law, who looks at the work of Tarka the Otter author Henry Williamson. You can read the original piece here. Last week, in the first of two exclusive follow-up ... Read More...
The lead article in the current issue of the excellent Slightly Foxed quarterly magazine is by none other than our own Jonathan Law, who looks at the work of Tarka the Otter author Henry Williamson. You can read the original piece here. In the first of two exclusive follow-up articles ... Read More...
The lead article in the current issue of the excellent Slightly Foxed quarterly magazine is by none other than our own Jonathan Law, who looks at the work (and alarming Nazi politics) of Tarka the Otter author Henry Williamson. Here is the original piece, and in the next two weeks ... Read More...
Jonathan Law continues his look at John Ferrar Holms, the greatest writer never to have actually written anything... Not much is known of the early life of John Ferrar Holms, the “genius” writer who in a career of some 15 years managed to write almost nothing at all. However, one episode ... Read More...
Anyone who has suffered writer's block might take consolation from the life of John Ferrar Holms. In the first of two posts, Jonathan Law introduces perhaps the least productive 'writer' in the English language... On a murky day in June, Mark Pack wrote feelingly about the miseries of writers’ block – ... Read More...
From Ruskin's anti-capitalist rivers to the evil 'hydraulic empires' of the Soviet Union, Jonathan looks at the connection between water and social engineering... THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE. Life including all its powers of love, of joy, of admiration. So, in thumping block caps, John Ruskin threw down his challenge to ... Read More...
Jonathan Law reveals John Ruskin's mania for mucking about with water, and explains how it stood as an emblem for his wish to tame the “frantic monster” of unchecked capitalism... Richard Nixon loved mashing potatoes; Gladstone had a passion for chopping down trees; and John Ruskin – in many ways a ... Read More...
