Harper Lee’s battle wasn’t with writer’s block but the whisky bottle
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird remains one of the most beloved American novels of all time. Famously, Lee never…
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s little house of horrors on the prairies
In 1932, the Daily Plainsman of Huron, South Dakota, ran a feature about a local woman convalescing in hospital. Grace…
Another ‘big book’ — with big problems — from Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel, Purity, comes with great expectations. Its author’s awareness of this fact is signalled by a series…
Racism, paedophilia and an inverted Snow White
God Help the Child, Toni Morrison’s 11th novel, hearkens back to two of her earliest. Like The Bluest Eye, it…
Eugene O’Neill: the dark genius of American theatre
George Bernard Shaw called him a ‘Yankee Shakespeare peopling his isle with Calibans’. He was dubbed ‘a fighting Tolstoy’ and…
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Cartoons
‘He expects us to do all the grunt work.’
‘Ah, long warm summer evenings — what could be nicer than a gentle scroll?’
‘Of course, you’re too young
to remember the boring game.’
‘Now comes the hard part — tea
in Downing Street with Mrs May.’
‘Goddam’ people of colour!’
‘They’ve never forgiven us for George Washington retaking their airports.’
‘I’m quietly confident.’