Philip Womack

1 week ago | spectator.co.uk | Philip Womack

A recent American study, called ‘They Don’t Read Very Well’, analyses the reading comprehension abilities of English literature students at two Midwestern universities. You may be surprised to discover that the title is not ironic. That they don’t read very well is an understatement along the lines of Spike Milligan’s ‘I told you I was ill’. The study’s subjects were given the first paragraph of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, and asked to read it out loud, parsing the sentences for meaning.

1 week ago | philipwomack.substack.com | Philip Womack

Much attention is given to the monument to William Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon. Recent scholarship has placed it firmly within the context of academic monuments: demi-figures of scholars and priests in Oxford and elsewhere, in which a gowned figure rests his hands on a cushion, holding a book or a skull. Will, of course, is holding a quill and a piece of paper. There is another monument (in London), to a Merchant Taylor called John Stow, which shows him holding a quill in a similar position.

2 weeks ago | spectator.co.uk | Philip Womack

Rend your cheeks and rub ashes into your hair; for that most elegant, elusive of punctuation marks – the semicolon – is, if not yet quite dead, at least fairly close to being on first name terms with St Peter. Research from Babbel, a ‘learning platform’, shows that usage of the semicolon in texts has plunged by 47 per cent over the past two decades. I would be more surprised if the Pope turned out to be Catholic. These days, students struggle with commas and apostrophes.

3 weeks ago | philipwomack.blogspot.com | Philip Womack

A Writer’s Diary. Part Two, May 2025By Philip WomackTen years ago, I wrote a blogpost about my daily life as a writer. A few weeks ago, it suddenly rocketed to the top of the most-read list on this blog; I sent it to my current  writing students, who enjoyed it; and so I decided to do another one. Writers are often supposed to live quiet, monastic lives: to which my response is: if only.

3 weeks ago | philipwomack.substack.com | Philip Womack

In the archives of the Stationers’ Hall lies Liber B, which records entries for apprenticeships to the Stationers, as well as of rights to published works (an early form of copyright), amongst other records. It’s a wonderful object: you could spend hours leafing through it, the spiky handwriting of the clerks both alluring and alien.