Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. His essays, some of the most influential ever written, are full of personal anecdote, insight and humanity.
Michel de Montaigne
Connection: Shakespeare
Gazing Inward, Michel de Montaigne,
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was a nobleman, wine grower, diplomat and a friend of the King of France. In 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, he gave up his position as a magistrate in Bordeaux and withdrew to his chateau in the Dordogne, where he intended to pass the remainder of his life in quiet… Read more »
Ali Smith
Ali Smith (1962 – ) is a an award winning Scottish author, playwright, academic, journalist and one of Britains finest writers.
Honoré de Balzac: The Optical Gastronomer
Everything about Honoré de Balzac was exuberant, uncouth and larger than life. One of the greatest European writers and the founder of the modern novel, he was also a flaneur, treasure hunter, gourmet, political campaigner, businessman, self-publicist, inventor, interior decorator and con man. He participated in his age like a whirling dervish. Coming of age… Read more »
Growing Pains, Daphne du Maurier
Childhood Daphne du Maurier’s childhood was typical of the privileged upper classes of her time. Born on 13th May, 1907, she was the middle of three daughters to the famous actor Sir Gerald du Maurier and his actress wife Muriel Beaumont. The family had grown prosperous; the previous year Gerald had played the lead in… Read more »
A Lake, a Moon, a Sword, Morte d’Arthur, Alfred Lord Tennyson
Clutching the sword Excalibur, Sir Bedivere hurries to the lake. Some say the Pool of Dozmary in Cornwall’s Bodmin Moor was that very lake. About a mile in circumference, it is set in a basin surrounded by hills and lies on a tableland that borders the vale of Fowey. No obvious streams or springs feed… Read more »
He Left In Autumn
‘Mr Keats left Hampstead.’ Those are the words Fanny Brawne wrote in her pocket book on the day Keats set out for Rome. Such quiet understatement, when only days before she had repeatedly asked Keats: ‘Is there another life? Shall I awake and find this all a dream? There must be. We cannot be created… Read more »