I did a quick Q&A with US poetry website Fevers of the Mind. It's up online here.
Writing from the margins
I didn’t recognise the book on my shelf. I barely noticed it, scanning the titles quickly for a different one I had mislaid. But somehow the thin tattered spine of its dusty, crumbling dust jacket caught my eye as it rested in the dark, shadowed end of the book case. It was one of my... Continue Reading →
Walking into darkness: Alzheimer’s, my father and the ends of life
In November 1901 a woman named Auguste Deter was admitted to the Municipal Asylum for Epileptics and Lunatics in Frankfurt. She was fifty-one years old. Paranoid delusions about her husband’s fidelity had given way to amnesia and disorientation; she failed to recognise old friends and forgot life’s daily occurrences the moment they were past. Soon... Continue Reading →
Quick brains and slow tongues: the world of Damon Runyon
My parents are both now dead. My father died last, aged 90, in 2016. I had always associated my love of books with my mother’s influence. My father’s passing, however, made me realise ‒ too late ‒ that most of the books I turn to for comfort are those to which he introduced me. I... Continue Reading →
Living through lockdown: Julian of Norwich, TS Eliot and the life-shaped hole in our hearts
For those who don't feel inclined to watch the film I made for A Bit Lit on life during lockdown, here's a rough transcript. My name is Mathew Lyons, and I am a freelance writer and historian. In practice, that means I am lucky enough to mostly work from home. Sometimes I work on the... Continue Reading →
The life-shaped hole in our hearts: lockdown, solace and cultural memory
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to contribute a brief film to the A Bit Lit YouTube channel, created by Andy Kesson and others as a forum for thoughts on literature, history and culture during lockdown. So here I am, talking about freedom and confinement, about emotional and spiritual spaces, about monasticism and... Continue Reading →
Raising money for Alzheimer’s research
Just a quick post to say that I am doing the Dry January thing to raise money for research into Alzheimer's. As some of you may know, my father developed the disease late in life. Having seen its effect first hand, and having helped nursed my father through his last weeks and months, this is... Continue Reading →
Me and Debbie McGee – or, Life and Death in West Ruislip
I know what you’re thinking. What does Debbie McGee, diminutive relict of the late pint-sized prestidigitator Paul Daniels, have to do with anything? And, more specifically, what does she have to do with me? Just a few weeks ago, I’d have wondered the same thing. And then she turned up at the auction of my... Continue Reading →
Re-mapping the world: grief and its aftermath
I want to think of it like this: that learning to live with death is the last gift our parents have for us. When we were spring, they were already summer. Now their year is over we can see the full extent of life's horizon before us for the first time. We have a chance... Continue Reading →
The library of lost conversation
My father died in May, seven years after my mother. We are slowly emptying the house the two of them lived in together since the autumn of 1966, a couple of months after I was born. The house contains my childhood, of course, and those of my older brother and sisters – but mostly now... Continue Reading →
My Dad’s obituary in The Guardian
My father died on May 22, three days after his 90th birthday. I'm sure I will write more about him and his passing, but in the meantime, here is the obituary David Hencke wrote for The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/14/john-lyons-obituary
Memory and identity: a personal history
My father is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. He will be 90 this year. He grew up close by the docks in Beckton, East London, which are now long gone. He remembers seeing the first wave of German bombers flying over London on September 7, 1940. He was stationed in the Pacific when he... Continue Reading →
The Massacre At Paris: Kit Marlowe, the Rose Playhouse and me
As some friends may know, I spent last week acting in the final six performances of The Dolphin’s Back production of Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris at the Rose Playhouse on London’s South Bank. The offer to do so came out of the blue, so much so that - as much out of surprise... Continue Reading →
Mathew Lyons 