Showing results by narrator "Ghizela Rowe" in All Categories

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood began as a group of painters, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt, who wished to reject the stern and academic strictures of current painting and return to the simpler and more uncomplicated days before the Italian High Renaissance and the days of Raphael. The movement was short lived but very influential and, as well, was taken up by a number of different arts.

This collection of short stories contains several gothic tales of the macabre and chilling, by writers as diverse as Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary Shelley, H. P. Lovecraft and A. M. Burrage. These tales are designed to unsettle you, just a little, as you sit back and take in their words as they lead you on a walk to places you’d perhaps rather not visit on your own. Our stories are: "The Body Snatcher", by Robert Louis Stevenson; "The Mortal Immortal", by Mary Shelley; "The Thing on the Doorstep", by HP Lovecraft; and "Waxworks", by AM Burrage.

Othello is principally a story of jealousy and its destructive power.

Othello is a courageous general in Venice and - unusually for Shakespeare - a Moor with a black complexion. Although aware that he is a jealous character, and even though he truly loves the fair Desdemona, he is willing to be persuaded by his clever and envious ensign, Iago, that she is being unfaithful to him. It is a true tragedy, which is clearly captured in this telling of the story.

Love whether fleeting or of the ages, expressed with a look, a touch, or a thought is wanted by us all. Our classic poets did not surrender to the logic of the group or seek advice from others quick to blame but slow to embrace. Their legacy remains because it is true, because in that look, that touch, that thought, that display of words the heart remembers us and treasures us. Here are words and verse of love. For your ears, your loved one’s ears and hearts everywhere.

William Cowper was born 26th November 1731 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. Traumatically he and his brother, John, were the only siblings, out of seven, to survive infancy. His mother died when he was six. In 1763 he was offered a Clerkship of Journals in the House of Lords. With the examinations approaching, Cowper had a mental breakdown. He tried to commit suicide three times, and a period of depression and insanity seemed to settle on him. The end of this unhappy period saw him finding refuge in evangelical Christianity, becoming the inspiration behind his much-loved hymns.

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, but more commonly known as just Byron, was a leading English poet in the Romantic mMovement along with Keats and Shelley. Byron was born on January 22nd, 1788. He was a great traveller across Europe, spending many years in Italy and much time in Greece. With his aristocratic indulgences and flamboyant style, along with his debts and a string of lovers, he was the constant talk of society.

William Morris was born in Walthamstow, London, on 24 March 1834 and is regarded today as a foremost poet, writer, textile designer, artist and libertarian. Morris began to publish poetry and short stories in 1856. Morris' fascination with the ancient Germanic and Norse peoples dominated his writing, and he was the first to translate many of the Icelandic sagas into English. He also published limited-edition illuminated style books, with his design for The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer standing out.

Many giants of literature originate from the shores of the emerald isles: Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer, the Brontes, and Austen, to which most people would willingly add the name Thomas Hardy. Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and The Mayor of Casterbridge are but three of his literary masterpieces. But let us go further and add to his canon his poems....

Summer beckons each and every one of us to its warm embrace. For many of us it is the season we can most enjoy; the days are long and warm and all manner of things become easier. Nature shows us her most colourful side as she fills the landscape with colours and textures of every hue. As for ourselves we all seem a little more approachable, a little more likable. For poets, the Summer season conjures up many themes and images.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on 4th July 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, a town synonymous with the earlier Salem Witch Trials. It was instrumental in Hawthorne’s later use of American Gothic and dark romanticism in his writing. Hawthorne’s short stories were first published in magazines but in 1837 were collected and published as ‘Twice-Told Tales’. A steady literary career still did not come his way and so he worked in a good position at Salem’s port and married the love of his life, Sophia Peabody. They moved to live in ‘The Old Manse’ at Concord, Massachusetts.

The Elizabethan age had almost departed, and the world had seen the rise of great European empires that continued to hunt with mischief between themselves as they traversed the globe in search of more spoils and territories. In England, the Civil War had brought about the will of Parliament and the replacement of the Crown as the governing body. But with these Puritan times, and the subsequent Restoration, poetry had entered a golden age. John Milton, John Dryden and Ben Jonson are but a few of the luminaries whose great verse followed in the wake of the immortal William Shakespeare.

Poems can evoke within us an individual response that takes us by surprise; that opens our ears and eyes to very personal feelings. Forget the idea of classic poetry being somehow dull and boring and best kept to children's textbooks. It still has life, vibrancy, and relevance to our lives today. Where to start? How to do that? Poetry can be difficult. We've put together some very eclectic Poetry Hours, with a broad range of poets and themes, to entice you and seduce you with all manner of temptations.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born on May 12th, 1828 in London, England. Together with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, they developed and founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It’s mission: to reform English art and return to the detail, intense colours and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art. The brotherhood's magazine, The Germ, was first published in 1850, with Rossetti contributing a poem, 'The Blessed Damozel', and a story about a fictional Italian artist inspired by a vision of a woman.

Charlotte Mary Mew was born on 15th November, 1869 in London to professional parents her father was responsible for the design of Hampstead Town Hall. Charlotte, one of seven children, three of whom died in early childhood, was educated at Lucy Harrison's School for Girls and attended lectures at University College, London.

Christina Georgina Rossetti remains one of the most important poets in the British tradition, both for her own work and those she influenced, most notably Virginia Wolfe. Rossetti is praised for her willingness to explore different genres and poetic forms within her body of work. Thematically, her poems run the gamut from frustrated love, to religion, to the Gothic, and beyond. Her choice of form is equally eclectic. Here, a reading of some of her best work by David Shaw-Parker and Ghizela Rowe.

Poetry has over the centuries grouped poets or poems into many different themes and movements. Amongst its most unusual movements are the English wordsmiths, The Silver Poets. This select band lived during the sixteenth century reign of Queen Elizabeth 1st. Amongst their storied ranks were Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Davies, Michael Drayton and Mary Sidney (Herbert), the Countess of Pembroke.

Elizabeth Gaskell is equally well known as Mrs Gaskell. When her mother died, she was three months old and she was sent to live in Knutsford, Cheshire with her Aunt Hannah, this setting would become the basis for her novel Cranford.

Sleep. That most mysterious of times. The unconscious hours. Everyone needs it. Sleep offers a respite from the rigors and challenges of the day - a chance for the brain to process what has happened and bring rest and recuperation before the cycle of daytime activity begins again. Our poets, from Kipling and Swinburne through Hafiz, James Joyce, Edgar Allan Poe and a pillowful of others, explore the wish to rest, to close the eyes and reside in the land of nod.

With almost a million words at its command, it is not surprising that these Isles have produced some of the most beautiful, moving and descriptive verse through the centuries. In this series we look at individual poets who have shaped and influenced their craft and cement their place in our heritage. Matthew Arnold is rightly placed amongst the other greats of Victorian poetry: Browning and Tennyson. The son of the founder of Rugby School, he grew up to become a poet via a career as a school inspector.

In the war a great volume of poetry was written, produced and published in books, periodicals, newspapers or letters back to home. We often think of war as a necessity. We fight for a more just and better world. We often fail. But in our poets we gain a truth and a morality that shocks us, consoles us and holds our values to the light. In this volume we hear poems from the front, from home, from soldiers, from auxiliaries, from friend and from foe.