Artistic Suffering
Book review of At Last by Edward St Aubyn
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
A Different Habit of Vision
The short-lived Vorticist movement was ridiculed in its day. Now it seems brave and prescient
Hullabaloo in the Great Karoo
South Africa’s desert is a battleground between astronomers and gas companies
A Monstrous Waste
Bobby Fischer was a chess phenomenon who squandered his talent. But we should remember the talent
American Dreaming
‘I only discovered both how much I was missing New York and what was irritating me about Berlin when I visited Manhattan in the week after bin Laden’s killing’
The Settlements: Life Between the Lines
"When the media talk about evacuating settlements, they are thinking of caravans. Look at what we've built. You want to remove this?"
To the Polo Saddle Born
While polo as a spectator sport is primarily for the Manolo-wearing classes in England, in Argentina it is much more of a national sport
The Music Of Love
A working-class Scottish upbringing taught James Macmillan about music and fatherhood. If only more artists would take up the mantle
No Such Thing
The infamous phrase shouldn't be attributed to Mrs T — it was first coined by David Lodge in his novel, Ginger, You're Barmy
Burke’s Warning
History may remember the Arab Spring's "noble revolutionaries" in the same terms as those of the French Revolution — utopian and doomed to failure
Blundering in the Desert
Book review of Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda
Well Worth an Arm and a Leg
Book review of Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe by Charles Freeman and Walsingham: Pilgrims and Pilgrimage by Michael Rear