spiritualism

The problem with westerners seeking oriental enlightenment

27 January 2024 9:00 am

Those chasing after blissful satori never seem interested in the people who actually live in Asia. They want to float in higher spheres

The truth about ‘the most haunted house in England’

8 October 2022 9:00 am

Place and story are little remembered now. The rectory in Essex was severely damaged by fire in 1939. But any…

The mediums who pioneered abstract art

26 September 2020 9:00 am

The mediumistic art of various cranks, crackpots and old dowagers is finally being taken seriously – and about time too, says Laura Gascoigne

Self-Help goes mainstream – can Marianne Power survive her own quest?

29 September 2018 9:00 am

Is there anyone left who’d still be mortified to have it known that they’d purchased, or maybe even benefited from,…

‘Speak! Speak!’ by John Everett Millais (1895)

The spirits of the age

28 October 2017 9:00 am

Children started knocking on my door last month wearing Donald Trump face masks and asking for money. Indeed, one enterprising…

The Bridgeman Art Library

Laurence Oliphant: oddest of Victorian oddballs

12 March 2016 9:00 am

As an erstwhile obituarist, I pity the poor hack who had to write up the life of Laurence Oliphant —…

Barry Humphries’s diary: My war with ‘Wow!’

29 October 2015 9:00 am

I’m counting ‘Wows!’ Suddenly everyone is using this irritating expletive expressing incredulity, amazement and nothing at all. I’ve heard it…

‘I hope you don’t mind these letters that just go on and on’

Iris Murdoch’s letters just go on and on — as she herself was the first to admit

29 October 2015 9:00 am

Iris Murdoch’s emotionally hectic novels have been enjoying a comeback lately, with an excellent Radio 4 dramatisation of The Sea,…