Books
Too Many Poets
Too many poets pack a line with thought But melody refuses to take wing. It’s not that meaning has been…
What’s to become of Pedro Friedeberg’s letters?
The year 2015 has been designated one of Anglo-Mexican amity, with celebrations planned in both countries by both governments. But…
Too Many Poets
Too many poets pack a line with thought But melody refuses to take wing. It’s not that meaning has been…
The other trenches: the Dardanelles, 100 years on
Peter Parker discerns classical allusion amid the horror in two books commemorating the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign
When Rex met Edith: a meeting of minds in interwar England
Rex Whistler — this book’s ‘bright young thing’ — was an artist of the 1920s and 1930s, and Edith Olivier,…
Back to Bedlam: Patrick Skene Catling on the book that makes madness visible
Madness is an ancient, evidently inscrutable mystery, often regarded with superstitious fear, yet can provide a refuge from reality. Sometimes,…
The secret life of the short story
The short story likes to play the underdog. Famously unfavoured by publishers, it has none of the commercial clout of…
Melissa Kite comes out fighting. Again
Madison Flight is a divorce lawyer, nicknamed ‘the Chair-Scraper’ for the number of times she leaps to her feet arguing…
The self-taught maritime artist who transcends ‘naïve’ cliché
In the manner of Richard Holmes’s Footsteps, Julia Blackburn’s story of John Craske is as much autobiography as biography, as…
Justin Cartwright on redheads, anti-Semitism and the betrayal of Christ
Peter Stanford is a writer on religious and ethical matters. He was for four years editor of the Catholic Herald.…
Brian Sewell does some donkey work: how Britain’s best-known art critic put his ass on the line
I suppose all children’s authors write the stories they would have liked to read as children. But in the case of…
Ghost Hands
Sant’Apollinaire Nuovo, Ravenna Your hands brush marble, feel impelled To touch where crisp cold tesserae Compose a fine array Of…
Books and arts
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
Ghost Hands
Sant’Apollinaire Nuovo, Ravenna Your hands brush marble, feel impelled To touch where crisp cold tesserae Compose a fine array Of…
Ghost Hands
Sant’Apollinaire Nuovo, Ravenna Your hands brush marble, feel impelled To touch where crisp cold tesserae Compose a fine array Of…
Wolves in the Lake District get everyone’s pheromones going
Locate. Stalk. Encounter. Rush. Chase. The pace of Sarah Hall’s fifth novel follows the five stages of a wolf hunt…
Stolen kisses and naked girls: there is much to wonder about in Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland
A.S. Byatt explores the dark alternatives to innocence in Lewis Carroll’s deeply disturbing looking-glass world
A rebellion among Rugby schoolboys proved perfect training for its ringleader in putting down a Jamaican slave-rising in later life
The public schools ought to have gone out of business long ago. The Education Act of 1944, which promised ‘state-aided…
A lost American classic to rival anything by Faulkner
It’s rare that granitic and iron-jawed prose is also enveloping and warm, but that’s just one of the many enticing…
Leonid Yakobson: the greatest ballet genius you’ve never heard of
On YouTube there’s a brief dance video of a Viennese waltz so enchanting that not even Fred and Ginger in…
For the Time Being
Time slips away while we conjecture how to make best use of it. Waking late, the hours already sliding by,…
The knives come out of the cabinet in Churchill’s wartime government
Coalitions, as David Cameron has discovered, are tricky things to manage. How much more difficult, then, was it for Winston…
Baiting the trap with CHEESE: how we fooled the Germans in the second world war
Second world war deception operations are now widely known, particularly those which misled the Germans into thinking that the D-Day…
A mad menage — and menagerie - in Mexico: the life of Leonora Carrington in fictional form
Leonora Carrington is one of those jack-in-the-boxes who languish forgotten in the cultural toy cupboard and then pop up every…
Lesley Blanch: a true original on the wilder shores of exoticism
Lesley Blanch (1904–2007) will be remembered chiefly for her gloriously extravagant The Wilder Shores of Love, the story of four…
