Dr Tony Shaw

Last night John Lucas gave a talk entitled 'Alan Sillitoe and the Midlands Working Class Imagination' at the Council House in Not...

I first went to America in 1985, and the most haunting thing about my visit was queueing in the bar at Heathrow some time before the flight ...

This is a serious question, because it appears to be true: more non-English people are attracted to Lionel Britton's huge novel Hunger a...

Elle se faisait avoir ; or, Sarah Palin was pranked. OK, but what else did we expect with this Alaskan clown? Let's gloat, though: Palin...

I saw a copy of Gilbert Adair's Buenas Noches Buenos Aires in an Oxfam bookshop this weekend, and I'm glad I didn't pay the f...

On this side of the road stand the Republicans, on the other the Democrats. The former hoped for a second Bush term; the latter (as the bu...

The statue above, of former SIU President Delyte Morris (after whom the library below was named), is by the scultor Fredda Brilliant, the w...

This is what happens when you forget to take your camera with you, of course: you have to buy a throw-away-after-one-use type, and the resu...

The long missing bust of Lionel Britton – sculpted by Fredda Brilliant – was sold via Live Auctioneers on 13 April 2009 for a remarkably che...

A Sort of Parody This is an odd book with a missing mark, a loss shouting loudly about its own lack, a howl of an orphan child, full...

Published in 1991, The Pelcari Project is a novella by Guatemalan writer Rodrigo Rey Rosa which is translated by Paul Bowles. It concerns a ...

I've not yet read Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger , although it sounds promising. But this is only the fourth debut novel to win the...

The statue of the poet Lord Byron, in a cage to protect the public from its falling on the head of any unfortunate, in the Market Place, Hu...

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Jacques Brel , who was a poet as much as a singer. Also an actor, Brel turned almost every ...

A copy of David Foster Wallace's 2005 Course Syllabus at Pomona College, Claremont, CA – where he taught –has just come to my attention...

Lionel Britton used to make a habit of cropping up all over the place, but I've no idea how he got in here! Just click on a photo on the...

I was recently reading 'Grammar and American Usage' in David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster when I noticed that he ment...

The internet can amaze at times: take for instance this link to this photo, which is part of a post in The Serendipity Project here : ...

Another thing Wallace mentions in the article 'Consider the Lobster' which had never occurred to me before is our tendency to use eu...

David Foster Wallace's article 'Consider the Lobster' , which he was originally commissioned to write about the Maine Lobster Fe...

It is sad that English people tend to know little of French singer-songwriters (or chanteurs à paroles .) Nevertheless, Jacques Brel, George...

In fact, an extremely obscure bookstore , part of which was recycled from a manure tank.

Lionel Britton spent some years working in the secondhand book trade, but he'd probably never have guessed that one of his own books wou...

In the April 1931 issue of The Adelphi George Orwell (who at the time was writing under his real name Eric Blair) reviewed Lionel Britton’s...

Jean MacGibbon was the wife of the publisher James MacGibbon of MacGibbon and Kee, and she gives an account of their encounter with Lionel ...

The image above gives a rough profile sketch of the antiquary John Britton, who may well have been the father of the poet John James Britton...

I can't think of any more things to add to Robert Hughes's list here: 'Loose ends that I want to follow up, and where you would ...

Herbert Eyres Britton's Diane [1920] was his third collection of poems after The Visions of a Dreamer (1912) and War Poems – date an...

The splendid photo below contains a great deal of detail, the most remarkable of course being a stern John James Britton's futile attemp...

The photo below, from left to right, shows Maud May Britton – the second wife of solicitor and poet John James Britton – between her sons Re...

I may have taken all of these images of New York City, although I'd have been unaware of the existence of most of them without Kevin W...

The postcard above shows a drawing of Netherwood in Hastings by ‘Barbara’, and has been posted to a blog entitled ‘ Old Postcard Art ’. It ...

This photo shows Cyril and Mary (née Hunt) Britton at an unknown outing in 1924, with Cyril's sister (Kathleen Ethel) Ivy below Ida. I ...

British Mills in Redditch was a large needle and fishing tackle factory on Prospect Hill founded by Samuel Thomas senior – the great-grandfa...

St Stephens School in Redditch was where working-class writer Lionel Britton was educated. He stayed there until he was about twelve, later...

The above photo is probably the poet and solicitor John James Britton, although it is by no means clear. Many thanks to Jane Matthews and Ro...