It may be a musical myth that Robert Zimmerman took the name Bob Dylan after the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.   Sean Sheehan   Just as uncertain is whether he knew about the poet’s radio play, “Under milk wood”, written in 1954 for the BBC. A new edition of the […]

The lynching of Black Americans that claimed the lives of thousands of known victims bears testimony to the hideous depths of racism.   Sean Sheehan   The castration, burning or other mutilations that could preface an actual lynching point to some fear of Black sexuality in the psyche of those […]

The “first ordinary woman in English literature” – a lovely way of introducing the Wife of Bath from Chaucer’s “The Canterbury tales” – “not a virginal princess or queen, not a nun, witch, or sorceress, not a damsel in distress”.   Sean Sheehan   The Wife of Bath is a […]

Before the street, people who were not family socialised in a village square, a town’s marketplace or, strictly for the elite, a court or castle.     Sean Sheehan   Streets as we know them came with industrialisation, becoming a vital public space and by the early 20th century street […]