Seven Angels: Kyoto beef to the rescue
When poet Glyn Maxwell was asked to turn Paradise Lost into an opera, he didn't think it could be done. Then he remembered a lavish banquet thrown for the G8 world leaders …Three years ago, I was working on my libretto for The Lion's Face, an opera a...
Reading is overrated
Too many people will have you believe that our very humanity resides in books – and that's reading a little too much into itI've been thinking about reading, and (as one does) got my Google finger out, and have been going through "reading quotations"...
Letters: Bawdy glee
I read the attribution of a series of "bawdy" lines to John Milton with great interest (From Paradise Lost to porn ... did Milton write rude rhymes?, 23 September). In fact, I believe these lines have been attributed to John Wilmot, second earl of Roch...
John Milton, purveyor of filth and smut?
A researcher at Oxford has turned up a filthy rhyme, attributed to the author of Paradise Lost. But can Milton really have written it?Read all about it in a news piece I've written. I had fun with this one!ClassicsPoetryJohn MiltonCharlotte Higginsguar...
Did John Milton write filthy, innuendo-laden rhyme?
Oxford lecturer finds An Extempore Upon a Faggot in 18th century anthology, supposedly by the author of Paradise LostDespite the fact that Ezra Pound wrote him off for his "asinine bigotry" and "the coarseness of his mentality", John Milton is usually ...
Sympathy for Milton’s devil
Has there ever been a more enthralling depiction of the prince of darkness than the accidental hero of Paradise Lost?Don't tell Richard Dawkins, but the devil is back in business. The cloven-footed one is popping up all over the place on celluloid – ...
Poem of the week: Lycidas by John Milton
This time, a remarkable supple kind of pastoral that makes room for a number of unexpected and daring fusionsDr Johnson, while recognising Milton's genius, took a famously dim view of this week's poem. "Such is the power of reputation justly acquired t...
Ten of the best visions of Heaven in literature
Aeneid by Virgil
We think of Heaven as up above, but, for the Greeks and Romans, only the gods preside on high. The best that humans can hope for is Elysium, the nicest section of the Underworld. Here Aeneas finds that the heroic dead have a grassy gymnasium: some "compete...
EM Forster’s work tailed off once he finally had sex. Better that than a life of despair | Sam Leith