T.S. Eliot
The English were never an overtly religious lot
Undeterred, Peter Ackroyd takes us on a breezy tour of the nation’s religious history, from the Venerable Bede to the present
Claude Vivier ought to be a modern classic. Why isn't he?
April is the cruellest month, but May is shaping up quite pleasantly and the daylight streamed in through the east…
The nightmare of making films about poets
Craig Raine on the challenges of translating poets’ lives and work to the screen
Nymphomaniac, fearless campaigner, alcoholic – Nancy Cunard was all this and more
Nancy Cunard’s defiance of convention began early, fuelled by bitter resentment towards her mother, says Jane Ridley
Disappointingly conventional and linear: BBC radio's modernism season reviewed
This week marks the beginning of modernism season on BBC Radio 3 and 4, which means it’s time for some…
When did postmodernism begin?
There’s a scene in Martin Amis’s 1990s revenge comedy The Information in which a book reviewer, who’s crushed by his…
The National has become the graveyard of talent: Manor, at the Lyttelton, reviewed
Somewhere in the wilds of England a stately home is collapsing. Rising floodwaters threaten the foundations. Storms break over the…
To the brownstone born: WASPS, by Michael Knox Beran, reviewed
It was only in 1948 that the term WASP was coined — by a Florida folklorist, Stetson Kennedy. Yet White…
Poems are the Duracell batteries of language, says Simon Armitage
Ezra Pound in ABC of Reading: ‘Dichten = condensare.’ Meaning poetry is intensification, ‘the most concentrated form of verbal expression’.…
Letters: The limitations of a Covid vaccine
Still distant Sir: In James Forsyth’s analysis (‘Boris’s booster shot’, 14 November) he infers that a vaccine, if provided to…
Driven to distraction — the unhappy life of Vivien Eliot
Do you think your mother slept with T.S. Eliot? That was the question I needed to ask the 98-year-old in…
Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets is a revelation
T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is full of music and movement. The players, such as they are, slip, slide, shake, tumble,…
Would Faber & Faber still exist without T.S. Eliot?
Like many a 20th-century publishing house, the fine old firm of Faber & Faber came about almost by accident. The…
Worth a trip for the David Joneses alone: Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’ reviewed
To bleak, boarded-up Margate — and a salt-and-vinegar wind that leaves my face looking like Andy Warhol’s botched 1958 nose-peel…
The English countryside on two wheels is like the best kind of poem
No seat belts. No airbags. Just air, and coming at you as fast as you like. Motorcycling shouldn’t be allowed,…
… trailing strands in all directions
Letters of Intent — letters of the intense. Keen readers of Cynthia Ozick (are there any other kind?) will of…
Down and Out in Paris and London is a chav safari
Down and Out in Paris and London is a brilliant specimen from a disreputable branch of writing: the chav safari,…
George Bell: witness to the truth
George Bell (1883–1958) was, in many respects, a typical Anglican prelate of his era. He went to Westminster and Christ…
When Groucho Marx lectured T.S. Eliot
Groucho Marx was delighted when he heard that the script for one of his old Vaudeville routines was being reprinted…
At the going down of the sun
One of the epigraphs to Peter Davidson’s nocturne on Europe’s arts of twilight is from Hegel: ‘The owl of Minerva…
The confessions of Gerard Manley Hopkins
‘I am 12 miles from a lemon,’ lamented that bon vivant clergyman Sydney Smith on reaching one country posting. He…
How pop is Peter Blake?
Painters and sculptors are highly averse to being labelled. So much so that it seems fairly certain that, if asked,…
The best children’s authors of 2015 — after David Walliams
The easy way round buying books for children at Christmas is just to get them the latest David Walliams and…
Charles Williams: sadist or Rosicrucian saint?
Charles Williams was a bad writer, but a very interesting one. Most famous bad writers have to settle, like Sidney…
David Jones: painter, poet and mystic
David Jones (1895–1974) was a remarkable figure: artist and poet, he was a great original in both disciplines. His was…
