Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was born at Oxford on 13th June 1893, the only child of the Rev. Henry Sayers, of Anglo-Irish descent. Her father was at the time headmaster of Christ Church Cathedral School, and she was born in the headmaster’s house. She was brought up at Bluntisham Rectory, Cambridgeshire, and went to the Godolphin School,…
Read MoreT.S. Eliot
In 1931, T.S. Eliot wrote in his essay, “Thoughts After Lambeth,” “The World is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark…
Read MoreAnton Chekhov
The anti-heroine of Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader, Hanna Schmitz, is illiterate, and serving a life sentence in prison. She is sustained mentally by tape recordings, sent to her by a well-educated former lover. In the film of the book, the tape with which she begins to teach herself to read begins: “People were saying that someone…
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