Getting Radical

Read Queen Mab the other day, whilst on holiday. A reminder of what a fiercely, deeply radical thinker Shelley was - and a reminder that he was a thinker contrary to what some of the critics would have you believe. (Wonder what their politics might happen to be, eh?) Also read Milton's strange masque for Ludlow Castle, Comus. A reminder of how deeply odd and entirely individual the epic poet's radicalism was - and how essentially, paradoxically conservative. Both men so rootedly English. Felt proud of the land of my birth, for once.