T.S. Eliot
The typo that spelled death in the Soviet Union
When Pravda Vostoka misprinted Joseph Stalin’s military rank on 25 October 1944, most of the print run was destroyed and the editorial team was shot
W.H. Auden’s virtuosity masked careful craftsmanship
Poetry came so easily to Auden that at times he had consciously to ‘keep the diction and rhythm within a hairsbreadth of prose without becoming it’
Frederic Prokosch – the man who seemed to know everyone
A beguiling memoir boasts intimate encounters with many of the 20th century’s most celebrated writers – but should we believe a word of it?
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
Lilacs out of the dead land
April is the cruellest month, but May is shaping up quite pleasantly and the daylight streamed in through the east…
Poetry in motion
Craig Raine on the challenges of translating poets’ lives and work to the screen
Muse and monster
Nancy Cunard’s defiance of convention began early, fuelled by bitter resentment towards her mother, says Jane Ridley
Disappearing doilies
This week marks the beginning of modernism season on BBC Radio 3 and 4, which means it’s time for some…
The coming of barbarism
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 is the graveyard of talent
Somewhere in the wilds of England a stately home is collapsing. Rising floodwaters threaten the foundations. Storms break over the…
Effortless superiority
It was only in 1948 that the term WASP was coined — by a Florida folklorist, Stetson Kennedy. Yet White…
The bare essentials
Ezra Pound in ABC of Reading: ‘Dichten = condensare.’ Meaning poetry is intensification, ‘the most concentrated form of verbal expression’.…
Letters
Still distant Sir: In James Forsyth’s analysis (‘Boris’s booster shot’, 14 November) he infers that a vaccine, if provided to…
Love gone wrong
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…
Polly’s pleb adventure
Down and Out in Paris and London is a brilliant specimen from a disreputable branch of writing: the chav safari,…
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…
In the wrong club
Groucho Marx was delighted when he heard that the script for one of his old Vaudeville routines was being reprinted…
Roaming in the gloaming
One of the epigraphs to Peter Davidson’s nocturne on Europe’s arts of twilight is from Hegel: ‘The owl of Minerva…
The great inscape
‘I am 12 miles from a lemon,’ lamented that bon vivant clergyman Sydney Smith on reaching one country posting. He…
In a class of their own
Painters and sculptors are highly averse to being labelled. So much so that it seems fairly certain that, if asked,…
