There is a distinctive Rattigan chord, audible in all his best plays, and present in the overtones of even his lightest farce
Among the Lost People
Train to Budapest, Dacia Maraini, Arcadia Books, 400pp, £11.99 (paperback) ‘To be a survivor it’s useful not to be…
A Fountain of Words: Inspiration and Trance in Poetry
For some poets, composition is a comparatively rapid and continuous process in which line after line appears spontaneously in…
British and French: New Paintings by Josephine Trotter
Perched on the prow of a hill, panning out over quintessentially beautiful English countryside, Josephine Trotter’s farm and studio…
Collective Spirit: Wilfrid Evill and the Art He Loved
Few have ever heard the name Wilfrid Ariel Evill. Any yet he played a crucial role in the history of modern British art.
John Donne: From Poet to Philosopher
John Donne is of course famous for his incendiary poetry; informal, biting, passionate, knotty bundles of brilliance that mostly…
Anne Frank: Tragedy and Triumph
I Anne Frank’s brilliant and complex Diary of a Young Girl (1947; definitive edition 1995) has the power to…
The Marvels of Maastricht
One Thursday lunchtime in March every year, a surprising sight can be seen in a warehouse-like building in the…
Literature and the Sciences: Where Do They Meet?
Based on a contribution to The London Magazine Discussion, LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2010. Let them not…
Van Gogh and his Influence on German Expressionism
Over the spring of 2007 a fruitful collusion between the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Neue Galerie…
Brother Can You Spare a Dime?: The People’s Music in the Great Depression
The 1920s had been a wild party for the city slickers but bad business, as usual, for the bulk…
Three Poems
Dis The obvious story, my darling, is that Dis caught you into his dark kingdom. I don’t know where I…
Labrys Child
Well grown I am the axe of two horns born of beast hair and her sharp flesh The pretty…
Poppy Day in a County Dublin Convent School
Break time. I shook the poppies in a box fired with the mission of remembrance. The green-uniformed girls favoured…
The Phoenix of Blackburn
Pigeons roosted in chimneys, made do with muck in lieu of nest – cooed like wind in bottleneck, shrugged…
Chest of Drawers
She speaks to the postman frequently, gives him small jars of cloudy honey at Christmas and invites him in…
Round Trip
Something has been forgotten, something important. At first, she thinks it’s an object, a ring of some sort –…
Final Furlong
He pulls the bolt back quietly and slips in through the crack. It’s gloomy, and the straw on the…
The Love-Light of Granny Bones
I was so careful but she caught me in the child’s room anyway – with the child mind you…
No Hooting or Fuss
Peter Carpenter Bernard Spencer: Complete Poetry, edited by Peter Robinson, Bloodaxe Books, 384pp, £15 (paperback) In 1974, in an introduction…