Make it a new year’s resolution to be less active
As a boy Josh Cohen was passive, dopey and given to daydreaming. Now a practising psychoanalyst and a professor of…
Small but deadly: postcards that fuelled the Russian Revolution
In this handsomely illustrated book Tobie Mathew makes a case for the lowly postcard’s role in the politicisation of pre-revolutionary…
Catchwords for today — what’s in, what’s out
The mid-term elections in the US, when Democrats took over Congress, were hailed as a victory for ‘progressives’, while David…
What did the Romans ever do for London?
When Bishop Guy of Amiens looked across the Channel in the 11th century he saw ‘teeming London [which] shines bright.…
An Igbo Paradise Lost: An Orchestra of Minorities, by Chigozie Obioma, reviewed
Nurture hatred in your heart and you will keep ‘an unfed tiger in a house full of children’. A man…
Life and death in 1970s Belfast: For the Good Times, by David Keenan, reviewed
David Keenan’s debut novel, This is Memorial Device, about a small town in Lanarkshire and its post-punk scene, showed that…
France gets a taste for Bacon
The case of Michael Peppiatt is a curious one. He first met Francis Bacon when he was an undergraduate at…
In Epping Forest’s dark undergrowth
In this current era of identity politics and a more fluid approach to gender and sexuality amongst a younger generation,…
The balletic, bum-baring rituals of sumo
An early morning in late November in the peaceful glades that surround an ancient temple complex. A Shinto priest in…
The best tribute possible to the greatest comics ever: Stan & Ollie reviewed
You mess with Laurel and Hardy at your peril. Their fan base is essentially the entire world. Samuel Beckett adored…
Neil MacGregor’s intense, impassioned new radio programme is shamelessly anti-Brexit
I suspect that whether or not you admire Neil MacGregor’s latest series for Radio 4, As Others See Us (produced…
According to BBC4, what was one of the ‘most important inventions in modern music’?
Here’s a tricky quiz question for you. What word completes this sentence from a BBC4 documentary on Friday: ‘The world…
A masterpiece of pro-Trump propaganda: Sweat at the Donmar Warehouse reviewed
Sweat, set in the Pennsylvanian rust belt, looks at a blue-collar community threatened by a factory closure. The script uses…
It’s hard to think of finer images of children than Gainsborough’s
When he knew that he was dying, Thomas Gainsborough selected an unfinished painting from some years before and set it…
Why 1919 wasn’t the year it’s cracked up to be
Gstaad The funny thing is that I was at school with a man called Ted Widmer, and I recently read…
I ended New Year’s Eve more sober than I started it
We were eight for dinner on New Year’s Eve: four men and four women with a combined age, I would…
The Kafkaesque nightmare of cancelling my BT broadband
Oh, I suppose I might as well give it a whirl, I thought, as the recorded voice began its dirge:…
Why former prisoners make the best lawyers
Kampala I am terrified of being with former death-row prisoner Susan Kigula. This is because she qualified for her…
Bridge
For those of us who play rubber bridge at TGR’s, the New Year began with the very sad news that…
Three titans
The Dutch grandmaster Genna Sosonko specialises in biographies of the greats of the Soviet era. His earlier forays covered the…
no. 536
Black to play. This position is from Botvinnik-Smyslov, World Championship, Moscow (Game 18) 1958. How could Smyslov have forced instant…
The ex factor
In Competition No. 3080 you were invited to supply an elegy on a piece of obsolete technology. Thanks to Paul…
2390: Tea shop
Unclued lights, all confirmed in Chambers or Collins, are three sets of four words of a kind, each set relating…
to 2388: Sea rocket
The quotation was ‘IN MY BEGINNING IS MY END’ (12/15) from East Coker (an anagram of the title), second poem…
The unending war against masculinity and men
For the first time in its history, the American Psychological Association (APA) has issued guidelines for mental health professionals working…
