Books
Swing, swing together
The public schools ought to have gone out of business long ago. The Education Act of 1944, which promised ‘state-aided…
Into the valley of death
It’s rare that granitic and iron-jawed prose is also enveloping and warm, but that’s just one of the many enticing…
A master of miniatures
On YouTube there’s a brief dance video of a Viennese waltz so enchanting that not even Fred and Ginger in…
For the Time Being
Time slips away while we conjecture how to make best use of it. Waking late, the hours already sliding by,…
Back-stabbing the old warrior
Coalitions, as David Cameron has discovered, are tricky things to manage. How much more difficult, then, was it for Winston…
Big Cheese in MI6
Second world war deception operations are now widely known, particularly those which misled the Germans into thinking that the D-Day…
The true flower of dawn
Leonora Carrington is one of those jack-in-the-boxes who languish forgotten in the cultural toy cupboard and then pop up every…
The abundant charms of a playful cupid
Lesley Blanch (1904–2007) will be remembered chiefly for her gloriously extravagant The Wilder Shores of Love, the story of four…
Dark humour for the dark continent
‘I’ve come back because I love the mess. Anarchy. Madness. Things falling apart.’ The lines belong to Roland Nair, one…
Studio Portrait
My uncle in his uniform, dog-collared, briar clutched at an angle, brilliantined hair with a central parting, très debonaire. This…
Arch absurdity
Miranda July is a funny and brilliant film director, performance artist, sculptor and smartphone app designer. In 2005, she won…
Promising more than he delivers
In 2001, Tony Blair took Sir Michael Barber from his perch as special adviser in the Department for Education and…
Public man, lover, connoisseur
To the 21st-century right, especially in the United States, John Maynard Keynes has become a much-hated figure whose name is…
Books and arts
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For the Time Being
Time slips away while we conjecture how to make best use of it. Waking late, the hours already sliding by,…
Studio Portrait
My uncle in his uniform, dog-collared, briar clutched at an angle, brilliantined hair with a central parting,très debonaire. This could…
For the Time Being
Time slips away while we conjecture how to make best use of it. Waking late, the hours already sliding by,…
Studio Portrait
My uncle in his uniform, dog-collared, briar clutched at an angle, brilliantined hair with a central parting,très debonaire. This could…
Wait until dark
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
Love them or leave them
My father was handed over a shop counter when he was a day old. His aunt had tried to pass…
A brave man takes a stand
Los Angeles ghetto life — thrashed, twisted and black — is not a world that most Americans care to visit.…
Punch and Judy politics
With the odd exception — I think principally of Charles Moore’s life of Margaret Thatcher — the genre of political…
Cheep trickery
In recent years there has been a fashion for so-called ‘new nature writing’, where the works are invariably heavy with…
The symbolism of slashed jeans
In a 2008 essay Zadie Smith held up Tom McCarthy’s austere debut Remainder as a bold exemplar of avant-garde fiction,…
Naming and maiming
India Knight 21 March 2015 9:00 am
Jeremy Clarkson has been getting it in the neck from Twitter’s (I was going to say) tricoteuses — but social…