We are of course in the midst of the series I am posting to you of my sonnets from ‘After Prayer’ but I thought I’d use this extra little post to bring you some news. Like of all of you I am more than a little frustrated at being, ‘cabined, cribbed, confined’ by the entirely necessary restrictions of our present lockdown. And one of those frustrations is that I can no longer entertain my friends to drinks, conversation, and the happy random browsing and perusal of the books on the shelves, and scattered across every surface in my study. So, by way of compensation and defiance, I have mastered the mysteries of Youtube and created a little channel there for a series called ‘ A Spell in the Library’, in which I invite you all to join me in my study, and do just what we would do, on any visit, take down the books, read favourite passages, and muse together on what Larkin called ‘The million-petales flower of being here’. I shall put up these little episodes two or three times a week, inviting you all to join me. Of course these usual blog posts will continue for my subscribers here. But if you’d also like to join me in this other mode of being together, that would be wonderful. I am pasting below the links to each of the three little films I have already posted, which should allow you to see the films on this page. But you might also like to pop over to my new Youtube Channel. If you would like to watch more of these, then do go over to Youtube and subscribe (entirely for free) to the channel and that way you can’ visit with me ‘ regularly for ‘ A Spell in the Library’. I hope you enjoy these and would like to come back for more.
So first off here’s the introduction:
Now here’s a little reading in which George Macdonald appreciates George Herbert:
And here’s a sonnet called ‘Spell: