Books
The gentle genius of Mervyn Peake
Mervyn Peake’s unsettling illustrations reveal a gentle, kindly man with the soul of a pirate, says Daisy Dunn
A podcast about the literary canon that actually deepens your knowledge (sort of)
While most of life’s pleasures can be shared, reading is lonely. It’s more than possible for six friends to enjoy…
Unique and disturbing: Donmar Warehouse's Blindness reviewed
Okay, I admit it. I have a girl crush on Juliet Stevenson. Ever since I first saw her in the…
The weird and wonderful world of hotel carpets
Sophie Haigney on the weird and wonderful world of hotel carpets
Why is Robert Burton’s masterpiece Anatomy of Melancholy being sold as self-help?
The BBC has been having a good pandemic. Stuck at home, a generation raised on podcasts and YouTube has discovered…
The art of the incel
The roots of incel subculture – and its magnificent memes – stretch back to Goethe’s Werther and beyond, says Nina Power
There’s no point in bishops – Covid has shown us so
It is a relief to parents that young children are allowed out a bit now as the length of the…
Why is it that age limits never apply to men?
I’d never have thought I’d be good at doing nothing. Or rather walking the dogs, loafing in the sun, trying…
The Literary Disco podcast made me want to throw my laptop at the wall
One of the stranger things that happened in the period just before lockdown was the sudden disappearance of audiences from…
The lost world of lockdown
It started when, the day after the announcement of some lockdown easing, I drove five miles along the coast road.…
Adapting Wodehouse for the radio is a challenge – but the BBC has succeeded brilliantly
Everyone knows a Lord Emsworth. Mine lives south of the river and wears caterpillars in his hair and wine on…
The author who made a living measuring the legs of lice
Wilhelm Nero Pilate Barbellion, real name Bruce Frederick Cummings, earned his living measuring the legs of lice in the Natural…
How to go clubbing without leaving your living room
To my surprise, what I miss most about life before the lockdown are parties. As others pine for restaurants and…
Europe's eye-popping first glimpse of the Americas
The earliest depictions of the Americas were eye-popping, and shaped European art, says Laura Gascoigne
In the Covid era, age isn’t just a number
When I told my seven-year-old granddaughter, over Zoom, how much I missed being with her, I added: ‘Maybe it won’t…
William Boyd on the miraculous snaps of boy genius Jacques Henri Lartigue
William Boyd on the miraculous snaps of boy genius Jacques Henri Lartigue
How many books are in the average home?
Admitting defeat 8 May is celebrated as VE Day, but it is also a date which marks a significant English…
The ridiculousness of the bookshelf police
‘People want to know why Michael Gove owns “racist” and “anti-Semitic” books’, reports the Independent’s website. By ‘people’ it actually…
Do we really want to go back to normal?
On the day our A-level exams began some wit wrote on the blackboard: ‘I wasted time, and now doth time…
Letters: The joy of balconies
The closing of churches Sir: Stephen Hazell-Smith is quite right in writing that churches should re-open (Letters, 18 April), however…
From Middlemarch to Mickey Mouse: a short history of The Spectator’s books and arts pages
The Spectator arts and books pages have spent 10,000 issues identifying the dominant cultural phenomena of the day and being difficult about them, says Richard Bratby
Now is the time for comfort reads
It all started on the day after the Brexit referendum. People who do not get the result they voted for…
The secret excitement that lurks beneath our distress
Something about the word ‘bomb’ has always thrilled me, and I know why. No school today. In the 1950s we…
‘Irish writers don’t talk to each other unless they’re shouting abuse’: Sebastian Barry interviewed
Sebastian Barry talks to Robert Jackman about family folklore, the joy of writing playsand why he is not an ‘Irish’ novelist
If you want children to love reading, don’t tell them what to read
If you want children to love reading, don’t tell them what to read
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