Nostalgia
Who’s still flying the flag for Britpop?
Alex James’s embrace of the term distinguishes him from his contemporaries. Miranda Sawyer reminds us of how much of the best 1990s music fell outside Britpop’s retromania
Potato crisps and the British character
Pickled fish. Lemon tea. Cucumber. Doner kebab. Stewed beef noodles. Salted egg. Soft shell crab. Coney island mustard. Smoked gouda.…
Nostalgia for old, rundown coastal Sussex
Despite the seediness and threat of violence, Littlehampton was a place of neighbourly camaraderie, fondly evoked in Sally Bayley’s latest memoir
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…
I have been ambushed by the past
The other week I turned up for the village walking club’s Monday hike. A dawn meet. Two cars. A 90-minute…
Even in the Swinging Sixties, Ray Davies was feeling nostalgic
At first glance, nostalgia does not seem like a subject much suited to exploration via the medium of the pop…
New York: the fact – and fiction
New York At times I used to think the place was real. The New York of films, that is. The…
On the waterfront
Much has been made of the American novelist Jennifer Egan’s mutation, in her latest novel, from purveyor of metafiction and…
In grandmother’s treasure-chest
Juliet Nicolson examines women’s lives and changing fashions through a rich hoard of buttons for all occasions
N.M. Gwynne’s diary: Old names worth dropping
As I get older (and my 74th birthday is now close), I get deeper and deeper into nostalgia. I do…
Should Euston Arch be raised from the dead?
Yes William Cook Rejoice! Rejoice! Fifty-four years after its destruction, Euston Arch has returned to Euston. Well, after a fashion.…
My Brasenose college reunion was great (even if David Cameron didn’t turn up)
A couple of weeks ago I returned to my old Oxford college for a ‘gaudy’ — posh, Oxford-speak for a…
An alternative map of Britain: caves, canals, megaliths and ley lines
Picture the map of Britain. Its strangely cadaverous shape, blobs of population and routes between them seem as familiar as…
Why squash deserves a place in the Olympics
Thank god for the Commonwealth Games: at least they gave us a brief respite from football transfer stories. Instead of…
A secret from my African childhood has become a deeper mystery
About 55 years ago, when I was about ten, my younger brother Roger and I discovered a slave pit in…
