Marcel Proust
Are Vermeer’s paintings really coded religious messages?
‘View of Delft’ is not just a representation of some buildings seen across a stretch of dullish water but a vision of the celestial city, argues Andrew Graham-Dixon
More gossip and scandal
Chips Channon was conceited, snobbish, disloyal, voyeuristic and wrongheaded – all qualities most helpful to a great diarist, says Craig Brown
Is there no field in which the Jewish mindset doesn’t excel?
More than 20 years ago, George Steiner, meditating on 2,000 years of persecution and suffering, posed the ‘taboo’ question that…
A people horrible to behold
The much-lamented journalist and bon viveur Sam White, late of the rue du Bac, The Spectator and the Evening Standard,…
Long life
Whether or not you believe in the afterlife, death remains an impenetrable mystery. One moment a person is making jokes…
