Books
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What’s to become of Pedro Friedeberg’s letters?
The year 2015 has been designated one of Anglo-Mexican amity, with celebrations planned in both countries by both governments. But…
Too Many Poets
Too many poets pack a line with thought But melody refuses to take wing. It’s not that meaning has been…
What’s to become of Pedro Friedeberg’s letters?
The year 2015 has been designated one of Anglo-Mexican amity, with celebrations planned in both countries by both governments. But…
Too Many Poets
Too many poets pack a line with thought But melody refuses to take wing. It’s not that meaning has been…
Evil under the sun
Peter Parker discerns classical allusion amid the horror in two books commemorating the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign
The gypsy and the swan
Rex Whistler — this book’s ‘bright young thing’ — was an artist of the 1920s and 1930s, and Edith Olivier,…
The unstable element
Madness is an ancient, evidently inscrutable mystery, often regarded with superstitious fear, yet can provide a refuge from reality. Sometimes,…
The decisive moment
The short story likes to play the underdog. Famously unfavoured by publishers, it has none of the commercial clout of…
For the sake of argument
Madison Flight is a divorce lawyer, nicknamed ‘the Chair-Scraper’ for the number of times she leaps to her feet arguing…
The lonely sea and the sky
In the manner of Richard Holmes’s Footsteps, Julia Blackburn’s story of John Craske is as much autobiography as biography, as…
Villains of the gospels
Peter Stanford is a writer on religious and ethical matters. He was for four years editor of the Catholic Herald.…
The ass saw the angel
I suppose all children’s authors write the stories they would have liked to read as children. But in the case of…
Ghost Hands
Sant’Apollinaire Nuovo, Ravenna Your hands brush marble, feel impelled To touch where crisp cold tesserae Compose a fine array Of…
Books and arts
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
Ghost Hands
Sant’Apollinaire Nuovo, Ravenna Your hands brush marble, feel impelled To touch where crisp cold tesserae Compose a fine array Of…
Ghost Hands
Sant’Apollinaire Nuovo, Ravenna Your hands brush marble, feel impelled To touch where crisp cold tesserae Compose a fine array Of…
Fifty shades of grey wolf
Locate. Stalk. Encounter. Rush. Chase. The pace of Sarah Hall’s fifth novel follows the five stages of a wolf hunt…
Thank heaven for little girls
A.S. Byatt explores the dark alternatives to innocence in Lewis Carroll’s deeply disturbing looking-glass world
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…
