John Baker’s Blog

The recordings of several lectures and a discussion with poet Robert Frost, which were left forgotten in the Dartmouth College Library in New Hampshire , will be published for the first time.
The journal Literary Imagination has revealed it will publish a transcript of one the lectures and exchanges in its next edition.
“It’s like Frost unplugged,” [...]

Children should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know. Natalia Ginzburg
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A statement from Rolls Royce:
“In view of the situation in Burma, [...]

Fifty people turned up in the Drill Hall for the Hay-on-Wye Writing Workshop, quite surprising when you consider that the fee was £25.00 per head for a two-hour session. Maybe billing it as a practical masterclass in the Festival Programme did the trick?
The high entrance fee also begged the question of who would turn up. [...]

Stradivarius made stringed instruments. If someone was instructing you how to make a violin, he wouldn’t teach you what Stradivarius did. What Stradivarius did can’t be taught. This fictional teacher might let you handle a Stradivarius in the unlikely circumstance that he had one to hand; allow you to feel the grain, even hear something [...]