Thomas Hardy

How do authors’ gardens inspire them?

23 September 2023 9:00 am

A sumptuous coffee-table book in which writers from Henry James to Frances Hodgson Burnett are briefly glimpsed while passing through the beautiful spaces that outlast them

The joy of wigs

12 March 2022 9:00 am

I thought, or anyway hoped, that once I’d finished the chemotherapy I would spring back to vitality. Seven weeks on…

The joy of the Great War memoir

5 February 2022 9:00 am

Harley Granville-Barker, actor, director, playwright, manager and critic, was a pasha of the Edwardian London stage. As a director, his…

It's amazing how little insight Paul McCartney has into the Beatles' genius

27 November 2021 9:00 am

The Paul people are out in force these days. A New Yorker profile, a book and a new documentary have…

Wishful drinking: pubs have always been good at bending the rules

14 November 2020 9:00 am

Pubs have always been good at bending the rules

Andrew Marr: Scotland is slipping away from the Union

29 August 2020 9:00 am

Staying in Britain for the summer has been, in many ways, entirely glorious. We have zigzagged from Shropshire through Derbyshire…

Up close and personal with Thomas Hardy

22 June 2019 9:00 am

I walked in out of the rain, dripping, and sat down beside the fire on the primitive high-backed settle. ‘Is…

Low life

21 October 2017 9:00 am

On Saturday night, I toddled up to the village hall for the fish-and-chip supper, quiz night and raffle — bring…

Ferdinand Mount picks out the plums nicely

21 May 2016 9:00 am

Book reviews, John Updike once wrote, ‘perform a clear and desired social service: they excuse us from reading the books…

The marabou defecation was so voluminous that the sapeur was beyond salvation

13 February 2016 9:00 am

Nairobi Nairobi’s old avenues were designed to be wide enough for a wagon and several span of oxen to U-turn…

Hilly, wife of Kingsley Amis, in Swansea

Larkin’s misty parks and moors — in all their lacerating beauty

12 December 2015 9:00 am

When Philip Larkin went up to St John’s College, Oxford, in the early 1940s, he found himself in a world…

Dorset is a palliative for the human condition

29 August 2015 9:00 am

Do-orzaat. Dorset is part of L’Angleterre profonde. It is possible to find evidence of modernity, but only in limited areas.…

Spirited but always stylish: Carey Mulligan as Bathsheba

Far from the Madding Crowd reviewed: a proper film with proper acting and a proper story

2 May 2015 9:00 am

Firstly, a message to all Marvel fanboys: there is nothing for you here. Nothing. No CGI, no endless battles, no…

Fifty Shades of Grey, review: ‘Use a condom!’ my sister shouted

21 February 2015 9:00 am

And so, in the end, I went with my sister, Toni, to see Fifty Shades of Grey and we saw…