Elizabethans transformed
There is little about our current dilemmas that our parents and grandparents have not already confronted and survived
Revisiting Nazi myths
Products of paranoid imaginations, less closely linked than might appear
The invention of Stoppard
“It appears to have been a sense that it was all becoming too easy that prompted Tom Stoppard to resolve, on his 23rd birthday, to give up journalism and write a play”
A knife-fight in a phone booth
In August the Department of Education announced that GCSE students would be allowed to drop poetry as a subject in their 2021 exams, prompting protests by what the Daily Mail called “celebrity
In search of ‘English Proust’
Can the Recherche be adapted and remain Proust? And should it really be seen as therapy?
Acts of remembrance
Commemorating those lost in the pandemic has not been possible. But we can mourn through music
The lure of totalitarianism
"Across the Western world, friends and families have fallen out over their diverging views on the populism that has flourished in the past two decades"
Sphinx without a secret
"Whether it’s the shadow government or the global elite, if it’s not one sinister cabal intent on taking over the world, then it’s another"
Inventing the sublime
As far as Rev Gilpin was concerned, he would have to rearrange Nature in his sketchbook until she became, in his approving term, “Picturesque”
The weird West
How would you complete this sentence? “I am . . .” Did you say “a journalist/lawyer/doctor” or “adventurous/intelligent/intellectually curious”? Or did you say “I am Arthur’s mother” or “Emily’s Dad”?