Poetry
My favourite failed podcasts
The promise of the internet was supposed to be thus: you could be your own bizarre, inappropriate self, and you…
Rescuing Elizabeth Barrett Browning from her wax-doll image
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an ambitious, passionate, determined woman – not the sad-eyed invalid of legend, says Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
Alfred Brendel the Dadaist
How many people are celebrating the fact that, last week, one of Europe’s most inspired writers about music, modern art…
My fateful appearance at the Bank of England’s Christmas drinks
Tidings of comfort as the vaccination programme advances, but shortage of joy. That’s my summary of a season in which…
Churches are more Covid-secure than trains or takeaways
Monday night’s murderous gunman in Vienna is officially described as ‘Islamist’. Brahim Aioussaoi, the man accused of murdering worshippers in…
A beautiful radio adaptation: Radio 4’s The Housing Lark reviewed
Nineteen fifty-six: the Suez crisis, the first Tesco, Jim Laker takes 19 wickets in a match. But also: Trinidadian pianist…
The death of the Southbank Centre
The roots of the Southbank Centre’s current crisis stretch back to before the pandemic, says Oliver Basciano
Why poetry matters
Juan Carlos, ex-King of Spain, behaved foolishly in relation to money and sex, and so his decision to leave Spain…
To understand the past, you need to inhabit it for a while
‘It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet; Work your hands from day to day, the winds…
From blue to pink: Looking for Eliza, by Leaf Arbuthnot, reviewed
On the way back from my daily dawn march in the park, I often pass my neighbour, a distinguished gentleman…
From Middlemarch to Mickey Mouse: a short history of The Spectator’s books and arts pages
The Spectator arts and books pages have spent 10,000 issues identifying the dominant cultural phenomena of the day and being difficult about them, says Richard Bratby
The best Christmas gift you can give yourself is to learn some poetry by heart
Every Christmas I find I am living in the past. I blame my father. He was born in 1910 —…
Remembering the genius of Clive James
‘Clive James Stirs.’ That was the standard subject line for the emails I used to get from the great Australian…
‘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 —…
The many faces of William ‘Slasher’ Blake
‘Imagination is my world.’ So wrote William Blake. His was a world of ‘historical inventions’. Nelson and Lucifer, Pitt and…
The joys of Radio 4’s Word of Mouth
I first heard Lemn Sissay talking about his childhood experiences on Radio 4 in 2009. At that time he was…
Haunting and hallucinatory: hospital poems from Hugo Williams
Hugo Williams’s wryly candid reports from the front lines of sex and family life are a perennial delight. Often timeless,…
Up close and personal with Thomas Hardy
I walked in out of the rain, dripping, and sat down beside the fire on the primitive high-backed settle. ‘Is…
The great anti-hero of our time: Diary of a Somebody, by Brian Bilston, reviewed
Brian Bilston’s life is summed up perfectly by the incident with his neighbour’s dog. The annoying Mrs McNulty comes round…
Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets is a revelation
T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is full of music and movement. The players, such as they are, slip, slide, shake, tumble,…
Last lines on Brexit from Geoffrey Hill
In 2012 OUP published Geoffrey Hill’s Collected Poems; they could have waited, because they’re now going to need another edition.…
The celebrated poet who’s been erased from English literature
Biographers are a shady lot. For all their claims about immortalising someone in print, as if their ink were a…
How poetry turned a failing comprehensive into one of Oxford’s most oversubscribed schools
Kate Clanchy is an extraordinary person. She is a veteran of 30 years’ teaching in difficult state schools, as well…
Finding hope in poetry, politics – and white Burgundy
During the Middle Ages, some of the monastic halls which evolved into Oxbridge colleges allowed their younger inmates to indulge…
How Philip Larkin f****d me up
I first came across Philip Larkin’s poem ‘This Be the Verse’ when I was 18 in the late 1970s. You…
