Skip to content

Luke McKernan

  • About
    • CV
  • Contact
  • Personal
  • Publications
  • Research
  • Shows
  • Talks
  • Web

Category: Literature

Day-dreams and bad dreams

There are some small out-of-the-way landing-places on the Thames and the Medway, where I do much of my summer idling. Running water is favourable to day-dreams, and a strong tidal river is the best of running water for mine. I wish those words were mine. They fit so precisely with my thoughts and my locationRead More

Luke McKernan June 8, 2020December 30, 2020Leave a comment

Few must be the words

So much of the past is now unreadable. Not just in a metaphysical sense, but quite literally so. Volume upon volume of the stuff that you cannot imagine anyone having had the stamina or the interest to attempt at the time. I pick up some works of the Victorian era and pity the typesetters. TimeRead More

Luke McKernan May 31, 2020June 1, 2020Comments (2)

Songs from Bedlam

For my talent is to give an impression upon words by punching, that when the reader casts his eye upon ’em, he takes up the image from the mould which I have made. Christopher Smart One of my favourite Kent walks is through the Fairlawne estate; those parts of it that are public, that is.Read More

Luke McKernan September 22, 2019June 14, 2020Leave a comment

Homes and works

A sturdy walking distance from here is Higham, a village midway on the main road from Rochester to Gravesend, with commanding views over the Medway valley and Thames Estuary. Here it was that Charles Dickens in his prosperous later years purchased a house that he had dreamed of living in when a child. His fatherRead More

Luke McKernan July 15, 2019September 22, 2019Leave a comment

The enchanted voice

You led me into the trackless woods, My falling stars, my dark endeavour. Anna Akhmatova, from ‘To My Poems’ (translated by Lyn Coffin) What joy there is in coming across the great work of art that you had not been expecting. The writer new to you whose words say exactly what you had been, unknowingly,Read More

Luke McKernan March 14, 2019December 24, 2019Leave a comment

What will survive

In my ignorance, I had thought that the tomb of Philip Larkin’s poem ‘An Arundel Tomb’ was in Arundel. One day I shall be in Arundel, I thought, then I shall pop into whatever church it is and see it. So it came as a bit of surprise to be wandering through Chichester cathedral, forRead More

Luke McKernan February 11, 2019October 10, 2020Comments (2)

2018 – the year in books

Next in these reviews of the year is the year in books. I read a lot in 2018, and it was a vintage year: for books published in 2018, for those I finally caught up on, and (best of all) all those unexpected surprises from times past. I’ve put the highlights into nine categories, withRead More

Luke McKernan December 21, 2018December 10, 2019Comments (4)

The matchless Orinda

In the heart of the City of London, at the corner of Poultry and Queen Victoria Street, stands a striking modernist pink stone building. No. 1 Poultry Street is the youngest listed building in the country (it was granted grade II* status in 2016), but the site it occupies has a long history. Tucked aroundRead More

Luke McKernan November 28, 2018October 19, 2019Leave a comment

A death in the comedy

Two things that it may not seem wise to introduce into a television comedy are religion and death. The final episode in the most recent series of the BBC’s Upstart Crow gave us both, and it was the appearance of the latter that I found extraordinary. When can someone die in a comedy, and whatRead More

Luke McKernan October 6, 2018January 9, 2019Leave a comment

What can we chant now to lift the dark?

Back in 1981 one of my favourite haunts was the Albion Bookshop in Mercery Lane, Canterbury. Squeezed into its medieval plot over two floors, tightly-packed books climbed up the shelves to ceiling height, while central islands created alleyways through which I could venture through all – so it seemed – that the world of lettersRead More

Luke McKernan August 30, 2018September 22, 2020Comment (1)
1 2 3 4 Next »

Welcome

My name is Luke McKernan. I'm a film historian and a news curator.

Top Posts & Pages

  • There was a third man
    There was a third man
  • One chord wonders
    One chord wonders
  • The tablet of memory
    The tablet of memory
  • On going a journey
    On going a journey
  • How many roads must a man walk down?
    How many roads must a man walk down?

Subscribe via email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Twitter

  • Twitter

My other sites

Active
Charles Urban
The Newsroom
Picturegoing
Theatregoing

No longer active
BardBox
The Bioscope
Diving for Pearls
Moving Image
Screen Research
Who's Who of Victorian Cinema

Categories

  • 100 guitarists
  • Archaeology
  • Architecture
  • Archives
  • Art
  • Astronomy
  • Audiences
  • Cinemas
  • Cities
  • Collections
  • Colour
  • Conferences
  • Copyright
  • Databases
  • Everyday
  • Exhibitions
  • Favourite poets
  • Festivals
  • Film
  • Found online
  • Galleries
  • Games
  • Geography
  • History
  • I remember
  • Images
  • Libraries
  • Lists
  • Literature
  • London
  • Museums
  • Music
  • News
  • Online video
  • People
  • Photography
  • Politics
  • Publications
  • Radio
  • Reading
  • Resources
  • Reviews of the year
  • Shakespeare
  • Silent film
  • Sociology
  • Sounds
  • Sport
  • Talks
  • Technology
  • Television
  • Theatre
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Video
  • War
  • Web
  • Work

Some tags

Almeida Theatre Awards BBC BFI Blogs Bob Dylan Books Bookshops Breaking Bad British Library Canterbury Charles Dickens Charles Urban Chess Coronavirus Flickr Guitarists Guitars Il Cinema Ritrovato Islands Jazz Kent Kinemacolor Lake District London London 2012 Netflix Newspapers Newsreels Olympic Games Picturegoing Poetry Restoration Robots Rochester Sam Wanamaker Playhouse Spotify St Helena Stories Twitter Walking Walls Web archiving William Shakespeare YouTube

Current reading

Current listening

Arts

  • artnet
  • Illuminations
  • Leviathan
  • Malcolm Attryde
  • Rijksstudios
  • Skissernas Museum
  • South London Art Map
  • Ugly Renaissance Babies
  • William Scott
  • Your Paintings

Collections

  • BFI Collections Search
  • British Library News Datasets
  • Film Archives UK
  • Musee Mechanique
  • Museum of Hoaxes
  • Museum of Online Museums
  • things magazine

Family

  • Bridget Designs
  • Patrick McKernan
  • Paul Incredible
  • Robin McKernan
  • Super Happy Win Food
  • The Kid Toy Review

Film

  • BFI Collections Search
  • Bibliothèque numérique du cinéma
  • Catalogue Lumière
  • Charles Urban
  • Chess in the Cinema
  • Cinema Context
  • Film Archives UK
  • filmportal
  • First World War on Film
  • jim le fevre
  • London's Silent Cinemas
  • MAVISE
  • Media History Digital Library
  • Moving Image
  • Neil Brand
  • Nitrateville
  • Picturegoing
  • Second Run DVD
  • Skinema
  • Terra Media
  • The Bioscope
  • The Cine-Tourist
  • The London Project
  • The Oracle of Bacon
  • The Race to Cinema
  • Who's Who of Victorian Cinema
  • Women Film Pioneers Project

Literature

  • BardBox
  • Before Shakespeare
  • Diving for Pearls
  • Future of the Book
  • Global Shakespeares
  • International Database of Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio
  • The Diary Junction
  • The Shakespeare Blog
  • Wisława Szymborska Foundation

London

  • Cecil Court
  • Charles Booth Online Archive
  • Classic Cafes
  • Derelict London
  • London Organ Concerts Guide
  • London Sound Survey
  • London's Silent Cinemas
  • Night Haunts
  • South London Art Map
  • The London Project

Music

  • 45cat
  • AllMusic
  • Bandcamp
  • Bill Frisell
  • Bob Dylan
  • Dave Douglas
  • Daxo
  • Fennesz
  • Forgotify
  • Gary Lucas
  • Kevin Coyne
  • London Organ Concerts Guide
  • Mary Halvorson
  • Medeski Martin & Wood
  • Neil Brand
  • Patrick McKernan
  • Radiooooo.com
  • ReR
  • Samantha Fish
  • Slapp Happy
  • Sue Foley
  • The Necks
  • Winter & Winter

My sites

  • BardBox
  • Charles Urban
  • Diving for Pearls
  • Flickr
  • Moving Image
  • Picturegoing
  • The Bioscope
  • The Newsroom
  • Theatregoing
  • Who's Who of Victorian Cinema
  • YouTube

News

  • British Library News Datasets
  • British Newspaper Archive
  • HoldtheFrontPage
  • I Wanted to See all of the News From Today
  • List of Newspapers
  • Media UK
  • News on Screen
  • News Storyline Ontology
  • Newseum – Today's Front Pages
  • Newsmap
  • Newspaper Death Watch
  • Onlinenewspapers.com
  • The Handwritten Newspapers Project
  • The Newsroom
  • Vanderbilt Television News Archive

Photography

  • Luminous-Lint
  • Muy Blog
  • Object:Photo
  • Shorpy
  • Stop Motion Studies
  • The Compleat Eadweard Muybridge

Resources

  • AddAll
  • British Cartoon Archive
  • Catalogue Lumière
  • Historical Directories of England & Wales
  • Information is Beautiful
  • Legacies of British Slave-ownership
  • ResearchBuzz
  • Shine
  • Six Degrees of Francis Bacon
  • Terra Media
  • WorldMap

Sociology

  • Charles Booth Online Archive
  • Digital Ethnography
  • Going to the Show
  • Norbert Elias Foundation

Sounds

  • London Sound Survey
  • Radio Search Engine
  • Roaring Twenties
  • Sounds
  • Tinfoil

Sport

  • Chess in the Cinema
  • Cyber Boxing Zone
  • Kent County Cricket Club
  • London 2012
  • London chessboxing
  • Stone Skimming

Television

  • Illuminations
  • Informitv
  • Lost Remote
  • MAVISE
  • Media UK
  • Terra Media
  • Vanderbilt Television News Archive

Unusual

  • Amateur
  • Ghostsigns
  • Grand Illusions
  • Napflix
  • NeverSeen Books & Curios
  • Philosophical Toy World

Archives

Calendar

February 2021
MTWTFSS
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
« Jan    
Supernova | Supernova Themes