Nostalgia

Nostalgia for old, rundown coastal Sussex

22 July 2023 9:00 am

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?

11 December 2021 9:00 am

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

24 April 2021 9:00 am

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

28 March 2020 9:00 am

At first glance, nostalgia does not seem like a subject much suited to exploration via the medium of the pop…

Times Square

New York: the fact – and fiction

8 December 2018 9:00 am

New York At times I used to think the place was real. The New York of films, that is. The…

Aircraft carriers USS Midway and the USS Enterprise of the United States NavY, 1945 (Photo: Getty)

On the waterfront

14 October 2017 9:00 am

Much has been made of the American novelist Jennifer Egan’s mutation, in her latest novel, from purveyor of metafiction and…

17th- and 18th-century buttons from John Taylor’s Birmingham workshop

In grandmother’s treasure-chest

13 February 2016 9:00 am

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

17 October 2015 9:00 am

As I get older (and my 74th birthday is now close), I get deeper and deeper into nostalgia. I do…

Arch enemies: Euston Arch (left), torn down to make way for London’s most miserable train station (right)

Should Euston Arch be raised from the dead?

23 May 2015 9:00 am

Yes   William Cook Rejoice! Rejoice! Fifty-four years after its destruction, Euston Arch has returned to Euston. Well, after a…

My Brasenose college reunion was great (even if David Cameron didn’t turn up)

2 May 2015 9:00 am

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

6 December 2014 9:00 am

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

9 August 2014 9:00 am

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

22 February 2014 9:00 am

About 55 years ago, when I was about ten, my younger brother Roger and I discovered a slave pit in…