Description: The Still Brimming Twilit River is volume 7 of Nicholas Hagger’s Collected Stories and follows The First Dazzling Chill of Winter/ (2016), which dealt with impending old age. The 1,202 short stories in the previous six volumes cover six decades (from the 1960s to the 2010s) in the life of Philip Rawley.

This seventh volume covers a seventh decade and contains 220 more stories and deals with his defiance of growing old. Philip Rawley’s attitude is akin to Tennyson’s Ulysses who, despite the infirmities of old age, is ready to sail beyond the sunset and the baths/Of all the western stars in search of new experience and new adventures.

Verdict: These mini-stories present a range of characters from a stable society. A number of these characters reappear in other stories, and are presented with their strengths, follies and flaws in different situations. The stories offer a complete literary experience in a page or two, and their brevity is innovatory.

The combination of opposites in their vivid titles derives inspiration from the 17th century: Dr Johnson’s definition of the wit of the Metaphysical poets as a combination of dissimilar images in which the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together (‘Life of Cowley’).

These stories are verbal paintings and present an image in action with a poet’s eye for significant detail. Hagger’s stories are imagistic, economical and vivid in clean prose and reflect the Age. They contain memorable images and studies of character. They are ideal for short concentration spans, reading on journeys or in bed. They drop into the consciousness like stones and leave the mind to reflect on the spreading ripples.

As we all know by now, Nicholas Hagger’s literary, philosophical, historical and political writings are innovatory. He has set out a new approach to literature that combines Romantic and Classical outlooks in a substantial literary oeuvre of no over 2,000 poems including over 300 classical odes, two poetic epics, five verse plays, three masques, two travelogues and 1,200 stories.

Furthermore, he has presented an original historical view of the rise and fall of civilizations and proposed - and detailed - a limited democratic World State with the power to abolish war and solve all the world’s problems.

His new book, the weighty, yet thoroughly engrossing 528 page-turner The Still Brimming Twilit River: Collected Stories Volume 7 covers a seventh decade and contains 220 more stories and deals with his defiance of growing old.

As we read through the pages, the chapters, the sections, the stories conjoining as a whole before our very eyes, it is beyond obvious that Nicholas Hagger is a poet, a man of letters, a cultural historian and, perhaps above all else, a dutiful philosopher.

I think we can all attest to the fact that it is very important to study history, but that it is perhaps even more important to know through which lens history is being viewed.

Facts matter, but historical accounts are always filtered through a set of ideological biases. No account of history is going to be completely neutral, of this we know, but establishment historians will generally emphasize the significance of events as they relate to their political beliefs.

Progressionally, libertarians and other historical revisionists are also analyzing history through the lens of fidelity to or deviance from their own ideological orthodoxies.

Thus what most conventional readings of American history via the philosophical, historical and political writings overlook is the fine detail, the honest, perhaps gritty truth behind the curtain, so to speak.

In closing, Nicholas Hagger has lectured at universities in Iraq, Libya and Japan, where he was a Professor of English Literature and he has written 54 books, of which include an immense literary offering; most recently King Charles the Wise and Visions of England (both published by O-Books), and innovatory works within history, philosophy and international politics and statecraft.

Thus, to miss out on such a genuine opus of collected works as which are lovingly contained within this welcomed collection from him today, would be one of the cultural, let alone literary sins of the century, my friends. Trust me on that.

About the Author: Nicholas Hagger is the author of more than 50 books that include a substantial literary output and innovatory works within history, philosophy, literature and international politics and statecraft.

As a man of letters he has written over 2,000 poems, two poetic epics, five verse plays, 1,200 short stories, two travelogues and three masques. His archive of papers and manuscripts is held as a Special Collection in the Albert Sloman Library at the University of Essex.

In 2016 he was awarded the Gusi Peace Prize for Literature, and in 2019 the BRICS silver medal for Vision for Future. He lives in Essex, UK.

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