‘Harry?  Oh, Harry serves his turn as Minister whenever he’s up on the rota, from a sense of duty.  And he teaches from a sense of obligation - not only to Albus’s memory, but to his, I mean Harry’s own, particular vision of what our world wants to be.  Besides, there’s more than enough in the way of crisis, risk, danger, and sudden alarms and ( Read more... )

Continuing the discussion from ‘Hobbies, FE, the Five Senses, and Writing’:

I wrote, ‘The American conservationist Aldo Leopold once wrote, “When Kipling smelled the supper-smokes of Amritsar, he should have elaborated.  Most poets seem to have subsisted on anthracite.”’

To which

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This began as a reminiscent bit of bloggery and ended by being a disquisition on the writer’s art.  Bloody typical, really.  But it does all join up at the end, if you’re patient with it.

I have said before that Fife, and indeed Scotland herself, I regard, not as the Mother Country, but as the Grandmother Country; and this despite my grandmother’ ( Read more... )

Today, I wish to address canon, fanon, reasonable deductions, and irrational notions.

Let us begin by defining our terms.  By canon, I mean, solely, the books.  Not the films, not the author’s extraneous statements outwith the pages of the books, not all the rest of it: the books.  (I am, in a way, fortunate in that I no longer see the films, as I ( Read more... )

‘Who the devil is Lord Lambourn, and why is he asking me to luncheon at his club?’

‘What?’  Draco snatched the letter from Harry’s hand.  ‘So they’re renewing their frayed family ties, are they?’

‘What?’

‘You have seen Lord Stod Withers on your choccy-frogs cards, I trust?  Well, his grandmother was a Potter; Lambourn’s his, what, something-times- ( Read more... )

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