Tom Allen

[Tom Allen @tom_xllen]

Over the past year I have been writing on various topics that interest me on the page below.

Subjects include Samuel Palmer, Cecil Beaton, Ken Russell, Iris Murdoch and Virginia Woolf. Do take a look or subscribe - it is entirely free.

https://t.co/eZshbgy9Ug

[Tom Allen @tom_xllen]

I review Hester Grant's The Twitnam Summer for The Oldie. Highly recommended.

[Tom Allen @tom_xllen]

I wrote for @OldieMagazine on the best film ever made about Shropshire.

https://t.co/n9nLJMDNrT

[Tom Allen @tom_xllen]

Me vs Terry Eagleton in the @NewStatesman

[VAN Magazine @vanmusicmag]

Then, Tom Allen delves deep into the lore of Ken Russell, one of Britain’s weirdest little guys who also happened to be a filmmaker focused on popularizing classical music. Were his movies always good? Well…you’ll have to read to find out. https://t.co/kv1SjvqjnK

[Damian Thompson @holysmoke]

Of course you can increase @BBCRadio3’s audience by moving away from classical music. And that’s what you have done. So much of Radio 3’s output is dad-dancing cringe.

[Edmund @Kulambq]

'What you have by heart, the bastards cannot touch, they cannot take it from you ... What you don't know by heart, you really haven't loved deeply enough.'

George Steiner on the importance of learning by heart. I've seen this countless times, and it never ceases to move me.

[john milbank @johnmilbank3]

Of course behind Macintyre ultimately stood four Oxford *women*: Anscombe, Murdoch, Foot, Midgeley. They were in turn partly taught by another Scotsman, the Anglo Catholic philosopher and theologian Donald Mackinnon. Even though the latter turned disappointingly Kantian.

[Yuan Yi Zhu @yuanyi_z]

If this quote does not encapsulate the spirit of our age I don't know what does.

[john milbank @johnmilbank3]

RIP Frank Field. A politician in a different league to almost all others. A truly great man of our times. https://t.co/XAZxDJUceJ

[Dr Francis Young @DrFrancisYoung]

I have to write a chapter about the 19th century and I can’t stand the 19th century, can’t we just agree it didn’t happen

[Victoria Johnson @Vicky_ljohnson]

It's beginning to look a lot like...in Merton College Chapel

[Tom Allen @tom_xllen]

It seems that I have become a blogger. This is my first piece, about my admiration for the stained-glass artist Thomas Denny and his Finzi and Gurney Windows in Gloucester Cathedral:
“What lies beneath this shell of lovely earth?”
https://t.co/jEUJGBf2N2

[Tom Allen @tom_xllen]

Speaker Event: Prof. Frances Spalding, author of the Times Art Book of the Year. "English Art between the Wars: How, Why and for Whom?". T.S. Eliot Theatre, Merton College, Oxford. Thursday, 2nd March (7th Week), 5.45pm. Free tickets available here: https://t.co/7DaAOWFvGW

[Tom Allen @tom_xllen]

@eleanorecclark Well done Eleanor!

[john milbank @johnmilbank3]

When creativity no longer attends to the already given it is no longer inspired and so no longer creative. It just seeks to dominate. (Goethe realised this.)

[insane moments in british politics @PoliticsMoments]

Ted Heath stars in an advertisement for cheese (1990)

[Tom Allen @tom_xllen]

Hi @DalrympleWill. Just wondered whether you are still planning to speak to us at Merton on Wednesday. I have sent you an email to ask about the arrangements for your visit. Thanks very much, Tom.