The Ritual Landscapes of Pre-Roman Britain
Many academic phrases, like much academic writing, are too awkward, verbose and cumbersome to find their way into common usage.…
Grappling with Structure
Giacometti: Pure Presence, National Portrait Gallery, London, until 10th January 2016 Giacometti lived a peculiarly double life, despite his…
Painterly Figuration
Eileen Hogan, Browse & Darby, London, 9 September – 2 October 2015 Julian Perry, Mascalls Gallery, Paddock Wood, Kent,…
Hemingway, Cézanne and the Dark Secret
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. Robert Frost, ‘The Secret…
Infinite Archive
Disinformation, Frances Leviston, Picador, 2015, 80pp, £9.98 (paperback) Kim Kardashian’s Marriage, Sam Riviere, Faber, 2015, 112pp, £10.99 (paperback) These two…
Beneath the Crust
Goya – The Portraits, National Gallery, London, until 10 January 2016 To most, the mention of the name Francisco Goya…
Ghostly Mentor
Complete Poems, Muriel Spark, Carcanet, 2015, afterword by Michael Schmidt, 133pp, £14.99 (paperback) Complete Poems, R.F. Langley, Carcanet, 2015, edited…
Neat Shape?
Gimson’s Kings and Queens: Brief lives of the monarchs since 1066, Andrew Gimson, Square Peg, 2015, 256pp, £10.99 (hardback) Penguin…
Faithful and Disappointing
The Importance of Elsewhere – Philip Larkin’s Photographs, Richard Bradford, Frances Lincoln, 2015, 208pp, £25 (hardcover) © The Estate of…
Snow Ice Cream
The snow of ’88 was the one that everybody remembers. Nixxon and I had cheap, roll-up plastic sleds that endlessly…
Wishing Tree at the Dargah of Hazrat Moosa Suhaag
To Heba Ahmed for the story Many wishful bellies Offer their bangles, Green, not with envy But melancholy, Of childless…
The Ideal Conditions for Reading this Poem
You’ll be sitting in a bar that used to be a brothel or at least that markets itself as such…
Ikey’s Bones
– What was your offence? – Receiving stolen property. – And who is with you? – I have one girl,…
Mocking Gods
Lost in the library of Alexandria, proof Selene the moon goddess mocked Apollo her sun god twin, each mocking the…
Spare Room
Trees scratch at the panes with bony branches Tap away time, and its second chances. Strange. This bed is disused,…
One Night Only
Too few saw you in your last theatre role, the affected hero of La Forêt mouillée, Victor Hugo’s seldom-performed verse…
My Father’s Job Book
Rippled by snow, the cover’s blue rose into crests. At nine, he drew it from the sideboard drawer. Scrubbed, late…
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