Eduardo Paolozzi and the Borrowing of Art
Walking from his Dovehouse Street studio on to the King’s Road to catch the number 19 bus to the…
The Dilemma of Edward Thomas
If a death can be good then the poet Edward Thomas probably had one of the best. A casualty of…
Stories from the Camino
Communing on the Way On an icy ridge during a storm, a faithless priest cancelled mass. When a devout…
Publishing the ‘New’
‘It is very good of you to throw a pound into our jaws, when you know nothing of what…
Alexander Herzen in London
Decembrist blood! We are taxed for their visions. The earth turns, returns, through cycles of declamation – Geoffrey Hill, ‘Scenes…
André Malraux: The Writer in Politics
André Malraux [1901-75] is a writer whose stature has fallen perhaps now that his time is long gone. His…
Self-Portraits: Exposure and Revelation
The modern self-portrait began in Renaissance Florence when artists first asserted their identity, while playing a cameo part, by…
Crazy Days, Dog Days
‘He deserves to be hanged,’ Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society ‘He is a person without…
Visions From The Rock
‘Zenga! Zenga!’ The Arab teachers were shouting when I arrived. They were gathered around a screen, reading about…
A Brooklyn Blue Moon
Rumbling over Brooklyn Bridge on the M train, Mia spoke of the poet we were visiting for the…
A Portrait of the Artist and His Young Country: A Joycean Centenary
A couple of summers ago I was visiting the Cotswolds and in one of those attractive villages, Stow-on-the-Wold…
Essay | Cliché as ‘Responsible speech’: Geoffrey Hill by Christopher Ricks
Geoffrey Hill, who died on 20th June 2016, was a great poet, a major poet. To celebrate him, we have pulled from…
An Everyday Story of Hydrography
‘No one’s interested so I gave it to Pete the Gardener’. As my grandmother aged, Pete the gardener gained…
The Death of the Literary Patron
During a recent drive-by of the Saatchi Gallery, in Duke of York Square, I found myself pondering the good…
The Sun shines on Opera
I will always remember my first visit to Glyndebourne. It was a Sunday and I was the countertenor in Westminster…
A Fantasia on the Nature of Genius
When the death of Peter Maxwell Davies was announced on 14 March, I took down a handful of CDs…
‘William oure brother’: 23 April 1616
A month before the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, I’m walking along the banks of the Avon, the river…
In Shadow and Blood: The Occupation of France
The Charlie Hebdo murders provoked the largest street demonstration in Paris since the Liberation of 1944. Now, in the…
Homage to a Hero and a Masterpiece: The Destruction and Rebirth of Sutherland’s Portrait of Churchill
Over sixty years on, it remains the most notorious act of wanton destruction in the history of modern British…
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