Books
The soldier-diplomat incarnate
I had the misfortune to meet Lord Richards on probably the darkest day of his 42 years in the military.…
Title Stories: Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
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Unhappy in their own way
Misery loves company. Anyone who doubts this old adage should pop into their local bookshop, because besides celebrity chefs and…
Goodman’s Garden
Where did they all go? Thickets of love and pain rustle in a dry light and skeins of corvidae traipse…
Heads will roll
A severed head, argues Frances Larson in her sprightly new book, is ‘simultaneously a person and a thing… an apparently…
Europe in sixty languages
So Basque is an ergative language! Well, I never. I couldn’t have told you that a week ago. I even…
Surviving The Cut
The moment Waterloo Bridge was planned across the Thames, a new theatre to serve the transpontine coach trade was inevitable.…
Skulls and cross bones
Skulls, femurs, ribs, pelvises, piled on top of each other in a chaotic heap: this, Denise Inge discovered, was what…
Cry, the beloved country
By 1940 Irène Némirovsky, who had arrived in France at the age of 16 as a refugee from Kiev, had…
The first and last puzzle
One could have endless fun setting quiz questions about Georges Perec. Which French novelist had a scientific paper, ‘Experimental demonstration…
Books and arts
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Genocidal thoughts
It takes a certain type of courage for a writer to complete a book and then admit that he does…
Goodman’s Garden
Where did they all go? Thickets of love and pain rustle in a dry light and skeins of corvidae traipse…
Title Stories: Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
The post Title Stories: Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas appeared first on The Spectator. Got something to add? Join…
Goodman’s Garden
Where did they all go? Thickets of love and pain rustle in a dry light and skeins of corvidae traipse…
Title Stories: Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
The rough end of Europe
Michael Pye appears out of his depth in a cold, grey sea in the mists of time, says Adam Nicolson
All that jazz
This is a big book, a monumental text with 800 illustrations, 400 of them in colour, to be contemplated more…
The worm turns
Something odd happened between the advance publicity for this book and its printed appearance. Trailed as addressing the troubled history…
Dwelling in marble halls
Phrases such as ‘Some aspects of…’ are death at the box-office, so it is not exactly unknown for the titles…
Living life as a fictional character
Early on in this ‘Biography in Conversations’ we’re told that the Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño ‘continued to see himself throughout…
It was a wonderful town
I picked up this book with real enthusiasm. Who cannot be entranced by those 20 years after the second world…
O Jerusalem!
Unchosen is the journalist Julie Burchill’s account of how she — a bright and bratty working-class girl from Bristol —…
Mother Courage
Italo Calvino, the Italian arch-fabulist, wrote a foreword to this celebrated wartime diary when it appeared in Italy in 1956.…
Autumn Shades
They start to say autumnal in the forecasts, And on the Northern Line the shifting panels Look bleached already. I…
