William Blake
Stories of the Sussex Downs
Focusing on a 20-mile square of West Sussex, Alexandra Harris explores its rich history, from the wreck of a Viking longboat to a refuge for French Resistance agents
Fame came too late for Nick Drake
The singer-songwriter deserved to be far better known in his lifetime – but reticence and mental illness contributed to his tragically early death in 1974
A 21st-century Holden Caulfield: The Book of Form and Emptiness, by Ruth Ozecki, reviewed
The world Ruth Ozeki creates in The Book of Form & Emptiness resembles one of the snow globes that pop…
What on earth has happened to Simon Schama: The Romantics and Us reviewed
‘You may think our modern world was born yesterday,’ said Simon Schama at the beginning of The Romantics and Us.…
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…
Let there be light
There has been extraordinarily little bright sunlight in the far northwest corner of Britain over the past year. Damp, drizzling…
Samuel Palmer: from long-haired mystic to High Church Tory
In his youth, Samuel Palmer (1805–1881) painted like a Romantic poet. The moonlit field of ‘The Harvest Moon’ (1831–32) glows…
The world of Thessyros: an icky erotic fantasy
Lore has it that those viewing naughty books in the British Museum could once do so only with the Archbishop…
Dickens’s dark side: walking at night helped ease his conscience at killing off characters
James McConnachie discovers that some of the greatest English writers — Chaucer, Blake, Dickens, Wordsworth, Dr Johnson — drew inspiration and even comfort from walking around London late at night
