Shelley
It’s a wonder that the Parthenon remains standing at all
From a temple to Athena, it became a Byzantine, then Latin, church, a mosque, a powder magazine and finally a ruin. Lord Elgin’s vandalism was hardly anything new
The crusading journalist who lectured on Shelley to coal miners
Loved and admired by fellow writers, Paul Foot was competitive, witty and exhilarating company – a friend of the friendless and a tireless campaigner for justice
What convinces Jeremy Corbyn that ‘there is a poet in all of us’?
‘Nobody should ever be afraid of sharing their poetry’, he says, in an anthology co-edited with Len McCluskey. But, judging by his own offering, afraid is what we should be
Man of many parts
William Boyd taps into the classical novel tradition with this sweeping tale of one man’s century-spanning life, even to the…
The spirit of beauty
Shelley, walking as a boy through his ‘starlight wood’, looking for ghosts and filled with ‘hopes of high talk with…
Classic misconceptions
Harold Bloom devoted his life to literature – but he had little feeling for words, says Philip Hensher
Spirits from the vasty deep…
‘The sea defines us, connects us, separates us,’ Philip Hoare has written. His prize-winning Leviathan, then a collection of essays…
The Romantic poets
People can be mightily protective of their Romantic poets. When I worked at the Keats Shelley House, overlooking the Spanish…
Pisa
Say ‘Pisa’ and everyone thinks of the Leaning Tower. Fair enough; it’s a curiosity, and the tourist board must be…
