Gore Vidal was the Virgil of American populism
America’s Montaigne, Gore Vidal, was born 100 years ago today. Born Eugene Luther Vidal, this Virgil of American populism entered…
The enduring message of Anthony Powell’s work
Anthony Powell died on 28 March 2000, twenty-five years ago today. It is also fifty years since he completed his…
The perfect genius of P.G. Wodehouse’s ‘never-never land’
Pelham Grenville (PG – or Plum) Wodehouse breathed his last on Valentine’s Day fifty years ago. As Evelyn Waugh saw…
The genius of Nancy Mitford
Nancy, the first – and perhaps most famous – of the six Mitford girls, died half-a-century ago on 30 June.…
O what a lovely Waugh!
Sumptuous, glorious, luminous, lavish: Granada’s 40-year-old adaptation of Brideshead Revisited remains the sine qua non of mini-series, says Mark McGinness
An odd, unsettled time
The word ‘magisterial’ consistently attaches itself to the work of David Kynaston. His eye-wateringly exhaustive four-volume history of the Old…
Effortless superiority
It was only in 1948 that the term WASP was coined — by a Florida folklorist, Stetson Kennedy. Yet White…
