FULL CONTENTS OF WOOL-GATHERER 2:

‘A Beginning, a Middle and a Choice of Endings’: Malcolm Bradbury, Charlotte Bronte and Tom Stoppard play narrative games with their readers.

‘To Knot or Not To’: landscape gardening in Paradise Lost and Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia.

‘A Gourd of Grape-Juice...’: gardening as moral behaviour – John Milton, George Herbert and Ruth Pitter. (see Extracts page)

‘Harping On’: cultural conflicts in Wales – R.S. Thomas and G.M. Hopkins.

‘Orcus Porcus and Good Times in Keighley’: the eccentric 17th century picaresque poem of Richard Brathwait. (see Extracts page)

‘Young Men Hanging Around’:  unrequited love in Ovid, Theocritus and Emile Gaboriau.

‘Cut the Philosophy, Mister Spock...’: the dangers of travel, and the loss of innocence it entails – the Roman lyric poets.

‘The Greatest Sophist...’: the pronouncements of Samuel Johnson.

‘Fleecing the World’: John Dyer’s The Fleece – a poetic epic of the wool trade.

‘Country-lover Seeks Peasants for Rustic Fun’: rural jollity not altogether what it seems? – Milton, Robert Bloomfield, George Crabbe.

‘Thorfinn Skullsplitter woz ere’: runes in Viking graffiti and a didactic alphabet poem.

‘Now all we need is a Certainty for the 3.30 at Haydock Park’: magic horses in Milton, Chaucer and Orcadian and Breton mythology.