Ivor S Ramblings

Ivor's Ramblings is a feast of poetry covering many subjects including fantasy, trips within one's mind, spirituality and life's experiences with an ever present message of having fun, enjoying life and making the most of the hand life dealt you to travel the pathways of life. It is coloured by his being brought up in a large military family, his teenage years living on the island of Penang in Malaysia and the trials and successes he has encountered throughout his lifetime. Avenues of the mind, depression, laughter, death, disability, religion and spirituality are all unfolded here in a most surprisingly entertaining fashion. The clear message of having fun whilst rising from the ashes of depression, redundancy and personal loss have never before been presented in such a personal and open manner that makes one feel that just reading his work could guide you towards one's own personal fulfilment.

While James Joyce was a central figure of high modernism, Malcom Lowry spoke for the next generation of modernist writers and, despite his denials, was almost certainly influenced by Joyce. Wherever the truth lies, there are correspondences and differences to be explored between Joyce and Lowry that are far more interesting than the question of direct influence. Despite numerous differences, their works have much in common: verbal richness, experimentation with narrative structure and perspective, a fascination with cultural and historical forces as well as with the process of artistic creation, and the inclusion of artist figures who are in varying degrees ironic self-portrayals. The contributors to Joyce/Lowry examine the relationship of these two expatriates writers, both to each other and to broader issues in the study of literary modernism and its aftermath. This collection embraces a variety of approaches. The volume begins with a consideration of Joyce and Lowry as practitioners of Expressionist art and concludes with an essay on John Huston's cinematic interpretation of works by both writers. In between are explorations of nationalism, anti-Semitism, syphilis, mental illness, and authorial design.

The first comprehensive biography of an extraordinary English poet and composer whose life was haunted by fighting in the First World War and, later, confinement in a mental asylum Ivor Gurney (1890–1937) wrote some of the most anthologized poems of the First World War and composed some of the greatest works in the English song repertoire, such as “Sleep.” Yet his life was shadowed by the trauma of the war and mental illness, and he spent his last fifteen years confined to a mental asylum. In Dweller in Shadows, Kate Kennedy presents the first comprehensive biography of this extraordinary and misunderstood artist. A promising student at the Royal College of Music, Gurney enlisted as a private with the Gloucestershire regiment in 1915 and spent two years in the trenches of the Western Front. Wounded in the arm and subsequently gassed during the Battle of Passchendaele, Gurney was recovering in hospital when his first collection of poems, Severn and Somme, was published. Despite episodes of depression, he resumed his music studies after the war until he was committed to an asylum in 1922. At times believing he was Shakespeare and that the “machines under the floor” were torturing him, he nevertheless continued to write and compose, leaving behind a vast body of unpublished work when he died of tuberculosis. Drawing on extensive archival research and spanning literary criticism, history, psychiatry and musicology, this compelling narrative sets Gurney’s life and work against the backdrop of the war and his institutionalisation, probing the links between madness, suffering and creativity. Facing death in the trenches, Gurney hoped that history might not “forget me quite.” This definitive account of his life and work helps ensure that he will indeed be remembered.

For years, the wishing box has remained silent.A gift from the dragon, Dragalileo, its secret was known to fewuntil Irwan unknowingly releases the mystical music along with his wish for a best friend. His traveling days long behind him, Grand Uncle Dragalileo sends Speare Morgan to answer this summon, thus renewing the friendship between dragons and humans. Soon after, Speare Morgan hears the music of the wishing box coming from a distant land. How was this possible? Together with Irwan, they set out to investigate. The music leads them to the City of Azra. To win his daughters freedom, Mubarak, the courts musician had finally succeeded in recreating the mystical music as demanded by the sultan. In search of the Sun Sapphire that resides in the Kingdom of Flames (a stone that can only be found by the dragons), the sultan orders Speare Morgan to bring him this stone by the rising of the full moon. Should they fail, Mubarak shall pay with his life. But where is the Kingdom of Flames? How will they find it? What awaits them there? Above all, what secrets does the Sun Sapphire conceal? Hence begins the adventure.

Fifty years after Ralph Dangerfield's death, a collector of literary curiosities claims to have his diary and threatens to blackmail fashionable London with belated secrets about people now in respectable old age. Sir John Appleby reveals how he uncovered this unscrupulous crime, along with seventeen more intriguing cases.