Not a bundle of laughs, the New Testament, let’s be honest. And yet there is a subtle realignment constantly going on, which qualifies the texts for examination as the overall work of a humourist.

from Book 10 Arab slavers prey upon the tribes. Leopold’s ghost will never sleep, Pinched and prodded everywhere by amputated hands. Allah and Jehovah have both behaved like vultures over Africa, ...

from Book 9 (Galatea) “I n gorgeous garments furthermore he did her also decke, And on her fingers put he rings, and cheynes about her necke,” A locket set off her cleavage. In each delicate ear was a ...

There had been a chapter in Kicking Away the Ladder entitled Fetish. It was the one that had stayed in Charlie’s memory. The creatures of modernity, his father had argued, imagine they have no ...

Farewell to inset words, to glorious words. Here, a place drunk with blossoming, the enameled field of living. The green water is a face effaced by confines. Farewell to inset words, to glorious words ...

from Book 7 (Erotic section from Agape or Eros) So I’ll endorse erotic love for all its risks of mania, possessive rage And merely ludic dalliance. At least its peaks and pitfalls entertain. Take the ...

from Book 5 Begin with ‘Once upon a time there was a man named Du Dsi Tschun: in his youth a spendthrift who squandered his inheritance. Fond of wine and idling, he drank and continued to drink, And ...

I had been reading Philippe Jaccottet in French and English for many years, so was particularly moved to come across his last published poems (La Clarté Notre-Dame) in the version translated by John ...

WE WERE ALONE in the gardens of the hotel, awaiting fruit cocktails that were not arriving. After the many years that I have come to this country, I should know that time is not the same here as ...

By ALAN WALL. • Chapter One. Attraction TWO CARS ARE moving towards each other on a winter night. It is a country road and there is no roadside illumination. Only the carlights. These beams swerve and ...

By G. KIM BLANK. The only book, except the Bible, which has followed the Anglo-Saxon around the world. —ad for Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911 The New Encyclopædia Britannica is a complete and modern ...

SIMON COLLINGS lives in Oxford. His poetry, short fiction, translations, reviews and essays have appeared in a wide range of magazines including Stride, Fortnightly Review, Café Irreal, Litter, ...