Matilda Bathurst

Existentialism and taboo sex scream of youth trying too hard

7 May 2016 9:00 am

How many debut collections does it take to stand up to one of the most accomplished short-story writers of the…

Matilda Bathurst chooses the best recent short story collections

22 August 2015 9:00 am

‘I just wanted the damn story to ask the right questions,’ sighs a disaffected journalist in Jack Livings’s debut collection…

The secret life of the short story

4 April 2015 9:00 am

The short story likes to play the underdog. Famously unfavoured by publishers, it has none of the commercial clout of…

‘Capel-y-ffin’, 1926–27, by David Jones

What was Allen Ginsberg doing in Wales? LSD

17 May 2014 9:00 am

‘Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,/ daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,/ grass shimmers green…’ The characteristic…

Fairytales of racism

1 March 2014 9:00 am

A preview of Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird appeared in Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists issue in April last…

Ann Patchett's new book will win you over, in spite of yourself

30 November 2013 9:00 am

Ann Patchett’s novels revel in the tightly constructed ecosystems imagined for their characters: an opera singer besieged among diplomats in…

‘Guitare et verre’, 1917, by Georges Braque

Braque in full flight

26 October 2013 9:00 am

Towards the end of his life, Georges Braque described his vision in the following terms: ‘No object can be tied…

Dreaming in the Renaissance

19 October 2013 9:00 am

The exhibition The Renaissance and Dream at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris (until 26 January 2014) explores how artists…

A meticulous projection of posterity: the Musée Gustave Moreau

Notes on…The house museums of Paris

28 September 2013 9:00 am

It doesn’t matter how many times they expand the Louvre or the Musée d’Orsay, Paris’s past is so colossally rich…