The United Nations and its Responsibility to Protect
In a few months the UN will be sixty-seven years old. Fifty-one countries joined in 1945. Today there are one…
Dawn
On steel earth and dog heat The dogs wept. Not silence. Not even the silence of the cage After…
The Unbearable Heaviness of Human Beings
Insecurity, Inequality and Obesity in Affluent Societies, edited by Avner Offer, Rachel Pechey and Stanley Ulijaszek, Oxford University Press/British…
To Be a Pilgrim
Pilgrimage is in vogue at the moment. The numbers of pilgrims arriving at Mecca and Santiago de Compostela grow every…
Sylvia, Shakespeare and Shamans
POETRY Poet and Critic: The Letters of Ted Hughes and Keith Sagar, edited by Keith Sagar, The British Library,…
Meeting Robert Graves
In the summer of 1970, when driving around Majorca, I stopped for a few days in the remote coastal village…
The Welsh Poppy Flame of the Sun: A Tribute to Raymond Garlick
Raymond Garlick, who died in Cardiff on 19 March 2011, was an important and influential figure in support of…
Dowsing
‘A dowser is a poet’ you thought, leaning on the farm gate to find the way. But maps have never…
All in the Mind
The Science Delusion, Rupert Sheldrake, Coronet, 400pp, £19.99 (hardback) The ultimate achievement of reason … is to recognise that…
The Fall and Rise of a Familiar Curtain
One February evening in 1982, leaving London’s Adelphi Theatre by the stage door, I am keenly aware of huddled,…
Ronan
Do not compare me to him For I live in his glowing shadow The now mist of his sway…
ArcelorMittal Orbit: The Middle of Nowhere
A deconstruction of London’s newest construction
Wandering Star
A review of Joseph Roth’s letters edited by Michael Hofmann
A Collective Undertaking
Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam, British Museum, until 15 April 2012 The current ‘Hajj’ exhibition at the…
The Poetry of Egon Schiele
An introduction to three poems in translation by the Austrian painter, Egon Schiele
The Politics of Polonius
‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be.’ This was a phrase I remember my grandfather using years ago. As…
Partners in Devotion: Canada’s Group of Seven
On the morning of 8 July 1917 the Canadian painter Tom Thomson set out in a distinctive birch-bark canoe…
Too much of a Bad Thing
So many tears have been shed for sugar that by rights it ought to have lost its sweetness. –…
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