A simple reading exercise

For a long time, one of my favourite radio programmes has been Something Understood, presented by Mark Tully on BBC Radio 4.  For those who have never tuned in for its Sunday evening slot, the format is as follows: each week Tully presents a selection of literary and musical extracts all connected by a one-word linking theme. Tully’s choices are invariably lively and unpredictable and the listener is left with a richer sense of what the theme word might mean.  

Reading a new book of essays, entitled Thinking on Thresholds, I had a similar experience.  The book is orientated around the central theme of liminality but it stretches its arms wide, accommodating essays on a great variety of cultural subjects.  Subha Mukherji, the editor of the volume, is a doctor of English literature and many of the contributors share her specialism.  Yet interspersed amongst literary essays, the reader will find contributions on improvised jazz and the ‘threshold of realisation’; references to the films of Satyajit Ray and their preoccupation with domestic boundaries; and reflections on the composition of Annunciation pictures from the early Renaissance to the present day.