Books
If you think Virginia Woolf’s novels are good, you should try her bread
I have to declare an interest: as a scion of the Bloomsbury Group, I was naturally brought up on their…
Don't let creative writing students read this book
One of these is by Lydia Davis, acclaimed American writer. One is not. They are whole pieces, by the way,…
Go east – the people get nicer, even if their dogs get nastier
When Nick Hunt first read Patrick Leigh Fermor’s account of his youthful trudge across Europe in A Time of Gifts…
Why don't we have statues of Michael Oakeshott?
Who or what was Michael Oakeshott? How many of our fellow citizens — how many even of the readers of…
Pompeii’s greatest gifts are not all archeological
The first visitor to take a break on the Bay of Naples was Hercules. He had just defeated some rebellious…
There was good art under Franco
Everyone knows about the Spanish civil war, first battlefield in the struggle that broke out in 1936 and ended nine…
Charlie Chaplin, monster
No actual birth certificate for Charles Spencer Chaplin has ever been found. The actor himself drew a blank when he…
Arianna Huffington meets Madame de Menopause
A-Huff’s career has been remarkable for the contrast between hard-headed social advancement (‘the most upwardly mobile Greek since Icarus’) and…
An escape to the country that became a struggle for Poland's soul
In 1993, John Borrell, a longtime foreign correspondent with no permanent home, decided to abandon journalism. Tired of writing about…
A Beckett fagend rescued from a bin
Spectator readers of my vintage will remember their first encounter with Beckett as vividly as their first lover’s kiss. For…
The diary that proves Anthony Seldon wrong about the first world war and the public schools
In March 1915 the 27th Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, with an already distinguished political career behind him, took the…
This beautiful new history of Kew Gardens needs a bit of weeding
Edward Bawden’s Kew Gardens is a beautiful book. Lovers of early 20th-century British art will find it hard to stop…
Jacqueline Wilson: 'The first book that made me cry'
Rumer Godden’s An Episode of Sparrows, first published in 1955, focuses on the roaming children — the ‘sparrows’ — of a shabby street in bomb-torn London. When ten-year-old Lovejoy Mason finds a packet of cornflower seeds and decides to create an ‘Italian’ garden hidden in a rubble-strewn churchyard, the consequences are life-changing for all who become involved. Below is the foreword to a recent reissue of the novel (Virago Modern Classics, £7.99, Spectator Bookshop, £7.49).
In Winwick Churchyard
The gravestones are laughing. They tilt at each other’s shoulders, droll tears of lichen blotching their honourable faces. Seated in…
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A sober critic
Let’s get one thing straight: gullibility is not a virtue. This simple principle appears to be difficult to grasp for…
Another secret garden
I’m not sure if Rumer Godden wrote An Episode of Sparrows for children or adults. It was originally published on an adult…
In Winwick Churchyard
The gravestones are laughing. They tilt at each other’s shoulders, droll tears of lichen blotching their honourable faces. Seated in…
Another secret garden
I’m not sure if Rumer Godden wrote An Episode of Sparrows for children or adults. It was originally published on an adult…
In Winwick Churchyard
The gravestones are laughing. They tilt at each other’s shoulders, droll tears of lichen blotching their honourable faces. Seated in…
War is good for us
The argument that mankind’s innate violence can only be contained by force of arms may make for a neat paradox, but it fails to convince David Crane
Sex and squalor in San Francisco
Frog Music begins with a crime against a young mother, committed in a tiny space. Unlike Emma Donoghue’s bestselling novel…
Mortar fire, weddings, camels, the French revolution: all kind of things get in the way of cricket
It isn’t just the elk, either. Also bringing proceedings to a halt in this wonderful anthology are camels (Bahrain), cows…
Oriel: the college that shaped the spiritual heart of 19th century Britain
Oriel was only the fifth college to be founded in Oxford, in 1326. Although it has gone through periods of…
The Thucydides of court gossip? Steady on...
Sir Brian Unwin leads off with some decidedly questionable assertions. He wonders why the first of his two subjects, the…
