Jeffrey Side

A recent article in The Observer called ‘The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperation’ ha...

In 1989, if you were unemployed in the UK, you were entitled to Unemployment Benefit, Income Support and Housing Benefit without being subje...

The UK government’s Restart Scheme is presented as a lifeline for long-term Universal Credit claimants, an intensive employment support prog...

I only recently became aware of Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)’. It is a song with one of the most beau...

Emily Dickinson’s poetry can often seem reserved and difficult to access when just read on the page. Her writing is usually short and indire...

I was saddened to hear of the recent passing of Brian Wilson, a towering figure in pop music whose influence extends far beyond his renowned...

Having spent over 25 years studying, reading and reviewing poetry, I’ve come to the possibly heretical conclusion that it’s often the review...

Empiricism’s influence on poetry has long shaped the cultural expectation that language can function transparently—that it may render percep...

The legacy of empiricism extends far beyond the philosophical and scientific spheres, permeating deeply into the aesthetic sensibilities of ...

Modernism is frequently celebrated as a radical rupture with the past—a movement defined by its break with tradition, its aesthetic experime...

Romanticism is often celebrated as the epoch that privileged subjectivity, imagination and emotion against the cold rationalism of the Enlig...

If William Wordsworth constructed a poetics of perception, then Samuel Taylor Coleridge struggled—heroically, inconsistently and ultimately ...

I was in my twenties during the 1980s and didn't realise just how extraordinary a decade it was. Looking back now, I feel that decade wa...

Note This post reflects my own process of learning about gender and trans experiences. At no point do I intend to define or speak for trans...

Back in the early 1990s, I was looking for something beneath the surface of religions. And I adopted a metaphor, probably not original to me...

When I used to be a Christian, I went through several shifts in what I believed, not just about doctrine, but about the very nature of God. ...

In the world of James Bond fandom, the Rolex Explorer 1016 is often regarded as the watch Ian Fleming intended for Bond. This view derives l...

I came across an interesting forum discussion on a James Bond forum called “Absolutely James Bond” that discussed which watch Bond wore in t...

(Adapted from an article I wrote for The Argotist Online in 2013) In his 2013 article, ‘Charmless and Interesting: What Conceptual Poetry La...