The King, the Prime Minister and the Loss of the American Colonies
Last June Alistair Lexden hosted a dinner at the Carlton Club for a distinguished group of Americans, deeply involved in…
Essay | My London by Venetia Welby
Venetia Welby is the author of Mother of Darkness, published by Quartet Books, February 2017. This is the twenty-first article…
Looking at Michael Andrews
Michael Andrews: Earth Air Fire, Gagosian Gallery, 20 Grosvenor Hill, London, until 25 March 2017 The School of London has…
Leaving Cuba
I am woken by Suci, the village postman, knocking at our door. ‘Pavel,’ he calls, coming round to tap the…
For Mary, Sotto Voce
Mary Cassatt painted mothers as monuments, well nourished, flourishing with their babies, with themselves, at the bath, in the nursery,…
The Past Beneath Our Feet
September in the Rain by Peter Robinson, Holland House, September 2016, 280pp, £11.99 (paperback) Collected Poems by Peter Robinson, Shearsman…
Unhappy Families
Revolution: Russian Art 1917 – 1932, Royal Academy of Arts, until 17th April 2017 Remake everything. Organise it so as…
Lenses from Somewhere: A Memory of Ted Hughes
After I reviewed Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being for the TLS, Ted Hughes wrote to me. He was…
The Barriers of Love
Letters to Akhmatova, Patricia McCarthy, Waterloo Press /Agenda Poetry, August 2015, £9.00 (paperback) How does a contemporary poet write a…
Changing of the Guard
Royal Opera House, Winter/Spring 2017 Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Giuseppe Verdi, Il trovatore, Francesco Cilea, Adriana Lecouvreur Kasper…
The Long Passage
The herons of Netherton Woods are standing still to watch the stillness that hangs at the end of their bills.…
I Want to Find Nothing
First, you must get rid of absolutes: Those Sundays you had as a kid When you watched dust oat through…
The Match Factory
Are you troubled by SPIRITS? Call FRANÇOIS, GIFTED MEDIUM, on 07812 678321. The advert was in the back of…
Sir Christoper Wren and Henry Moore
Beside the Mansion House in the City of London is a small building which does not draw attention to itself…
Murkund and the Upholding of a Bureaucratic Machine
Mukund breathed a sigh of relief as he left the immigration office in Dembe, capital of Babanya Letu. He…
Edward Ardizzone Wins his Place
The occasion of both a major exhibition in a public museum and the publication of a monograph devoted to…
Ford Madox Ford: ‘An Incurable and Dedicated Work of Fiction’
‘He sensed the virgin sucker at once. So we had the stories about Ruskin, and my Uncle Gabriel and…
In The Split Screen of the Heart
What do you say when both here and two hundred ———and twenty latitude degrees away no one lines up on…
Animated Machines
Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany, Norman Ohler trans. Shaun Whiteside, Allen Lane, £8.99 (paperback) When the Nazi Wehrmacht finally…
New England
From neon-lit cheap motels you hear the plainsong of the highway – the dogs and wolves of the hills,…
A Mosaic of Memories
War and Turpentine, Stefan Hertmans trans. David McKay, Harvill Secker, 2016, £8.99 (paperback) ‘People from the age of Europe’s…
Many Realities
Picasso Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, London, 6 October 2016 – 5 February 2017; Museu Picasso, Barcelona, 17 March –…
October Wood
Some niche: rested in planks with its own electric fingers hovering light to become our hands, caressing a mahogany…
You must be logged in to post a comment.