The Bloody Crossroads

In July 2014 a gay rights activist named Gareth Lee ordered a cake from Ashers bakery in Belfast. The commission was for a large square sponge bearing the legend ‘Support Gay Marriage’ and the logo of an organisation called QueerSpace. It was also to feature Bert and Ernie, the Sesame Street characters whose sexuality is the subject of much affectionate […]

‘I take a bath every month,’ Elizabeth I is purported to have said, ‘whether I need one or not’. Clearly, hygiene standards change, and it is very honest of Ruth A. Morgan to confess, in her preface to Running Out?, to her ‘love affair with the washing machine’ and ‘penchant for long, hot showers’. But, like many Western Australians, she […]

One hundred years ago this month, Harriet Monroe sent T. S. Eliot a check for the handsome sum of eight guineas. The payment was for a poem of about 1000 words, which Monroe had published in the June 1915 issue of her Chicago-based magazine Poetry. Pressed upon her by her overseas editor, and fellow American, Ezra Pound – then busily […]