The power of talking as thinking
The world’s greatest scientific building recently celebrated its 225th birthday. In 1799, a group of natural philosophers (the word ‘scientist’…
How did this London townhouse become the world’s greatest research centre?
If you were asked to name the world’s greatest research centre in terms of discoveries per square yard, the answer…
Ghostly grandeur
The history of the magnificent Thames-side palace, with its outrageous shenanigans spanning five centuries, is vividly brought to life by Gareth Russell
Searching for the best of all possible worlds – in London
Niall Kishtainy examines the eccentric ideas of Gerrard Winstanley, Thomas Spence, John Adolphus Etzler, Thomas More and other utopians who lived in and around the capital
Can the ancient Greeks really offer us ‘life lessons’ today?
Adam Nicolson thinks so. But his liveliest stories are about Pythagoras, who lived in a hole in the ground, and Thales, who fell into a well while studying the night sky
It’s thrilling to learn that the rebellious Urien actually existed
Once, when we shared the same history teacher in our teens, my older brother Dominic handed in an essay about…
The Greek myths are always with us
Once upon a time there was a collection of stories that everybody loved. They involved brave heroes such as Perseus…
Film's most unforgettable scene
Fifty years since The Godfather’s release, Thomas W. Hodgkinson revisits the film’s most unforgettable scene
Has nostalgia become the Greeks’ national disease?
Imagine a new take on the Greek myth of Pygmalion. A love-shy artist makes a woman out of marble who…
Paradise regained: how the world’s wastelands are regenerating
Ignoring the padlocked gate, my six-year-old son Nicholas and I climbed through a break in the metal fence and pushed…
‘Instapoetry’ may be popular, but most of it is terrible
Poetry is on a hot streak. Last year, sales in the UK topped £12 million for the first time —…
John Flaxman is the missing link between superhero movies and Homer
As you enter the forecourt of the Royal Academy, you see them. A row of artistic titans, carved in stone,…
The best Terminator film since the first: Terminator Six reviewed
The first Terminator film, which came out in 1984, was a high-concept sci-fi serial killer thriller. You can just imagine…
Gilgamesh, Michael Schmidt’s ‘life’ of a poem
In the mid-19th century, around lunchtime, a pale young man with an enormous beard could be seen in the British…
Greece is the word for the New Yorker’s Comma Queen
Mary Norris’s book about her love affair with Greece and the Greek language starts with a terrific chapter about alphabets.…
Playing mind games: Let Me Not Be Mad reviewed
The journalist Auberon Waugh, in whose time-capsule of a flat I briefly lived in 2000, once summed up what he…
The most shocking sight in ancient Greece: men in trousers
In his robust new biography of Alcibiades, David Stuttard describes how the mercurial Greek general shocked his contemporaries by adopting…
I’m in danger of becoming a flat-mind bore
Reading The Mind is Flat is like watching The Truman Show and realising, while you’re watching it, that you are…
Demonised by history
Some oleaginous interviewer once suggested to Winston Churchill that he was the greatest Briton who ever lived. The grand old…
Christianity triumphant – and destructive
In the late years of Empire, and early days of Christianity, there were monks who didn’t wash for fear of…
Sink or swim
I used to worry that I would never be a good writer because my childhood wasn’t interesting enough. I now…
Dark and graphic
A woman birthing bloated speckled eggs from her supernaturally swollen womb. Sushi screaming and squirming. A skull-shaped sweet, bearing the…
