Essays

Music, Art, Poetry and Myth

The Wishing Stones: Poetry in Mandalay, May 2002
Modernism and Tradition: the T S Eliot Prize Shortlist
Talking to Paul Muldoon
On Voodoo Shop
On The Soho Leopard
The Conjuror, The Parrot and The Past
Carol Singing and its history
There are No Male Groupies: Writing I'm A Man
Sex and Silence: Comte' d'Orsay, Rossini's Parody of Opera's Erotic Dream
"Piu Docile Sono": Mozart's Marriage of Figaro
Talking to Colm Toibin
Helmut Newton and Stiletto Feminism
Greek Furies at Diana's funeral
Reading a Poem
Rhyming Wars
Around the Minotaur

How Strangely Fogo Burns: On A Madrigal of 1600 and Seeing Things from Other People's Point of View

Nature, Animals and the Wild

Why Celebrate Darwin in 2009?

Why On the Origin of Species Hardly Mentions Tigers
Tigers in Western LIterature
Paradise Threatened: Journey to the Galapagos
Into the Woods: British Forests in Myth, and Today
The Running of the Deer
Robin Hood and the Greenwood
Sadder than Owl-Songs: Britain and its Owls
Raven the Wise
Hare Hunted, Hare Magic, Hare Tamed
Sacred Poison: Vipers and Adders
The Bloodflow Does Not Stop: Leeches and Healing
Sacred, Hypocritical - and Armour-Plated? Crocodiles and Alligators
Britain's Wild Ponies
White Stallions: The Harmony and Sexuality of The Horse
On Putting Your Dog to Sleep
Personally Speaking - on Life, Poems and Tigers