The Labyrinth and the Fountain
Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete, Patrick Leigh Fermor, John Murray, 2014, 200pp, £20 (hardback) In…
Sacred Hearts and Shadows
The Water Stealer, Maurice Riordan, Faber and Faber, 2015, 64pp, £9.99 (paperback) Gangs of Shadow, Michael O’Neill, Arc Publications,…
Finding a Language
Archipelago, Antonella Anedda, translated by Jamie McKendrick, Bloodaxe Books, 2014, 160pp, £12 (paperback) From Elsewhere, Ciaran Carson, The Gallery…
Elegy for the Passenger Pigeon
Some Letters Never Sent, Neil Curry, Enitharmon Press, 2014, 79pp, £9.99 (paperback) William Cowper: A Revaluation, Neil Curry, Greenwich…
Slow Realism
Let Me Be Frank With You, Richard Ford, Bloomsbury, 2014, 256pp, £18.99 (hardback) Richard Ford’s early attempts at novel…
A Peripatetic Life
After the Titanic: A Life of Derek Mahon, Stephen Enniss, Gill & Macmillan, 2014, 304pp, £26.99 (hardback) Derek Mahon…
Hell on Earth
Goya: The Witches and Old Women Album The Courtauld Gallery 26 February – 25 May 2015 Anyone fortunate enough…
Earthy Intimacy
L’Ormindo, Francesco Cavalli, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse 3 February – 5 March 2015 ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, John Ford,…
The Fury of Existence: The Young Martin Heidegger
Nur ein Gott kann uns noch retten: Only a god can save us. Heidegger, interview in Der Spiegel, May…
The Demise of Art Criticism
I’ve been writing art books, most but not all of them about contemporary art, for the whole of my…
The Wind in the Willows: An Absolute Necessity to Move
Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind and the Willows, though written for children, is a subtle and sophisticated work. The animals’…
Self-Portrait as a Francis Bacon
You painted with a scalpel, each canvas a wound excavated by pain, the body always something flayed and suffering,…
Dog Fox Slips Under the Fence
You rely on light to steal his show, as if the pouring in will force out the richest secrets,…
L’Heure Bleue
in this last blue flash of dusk the violins of our eyes are playing to the south west wind’s…
Gospel Oak
The fight dog’s name, said its proud owner, was Jake, an old white bull terrier, brindle circle around his…
The Western Wynde John Taverner 1490-1545*
I walk in sunlit Christ Church meadows, the skies not Lincolnshire – the grazing cattle and unfamiliar deer –…
A Student of Rock-Pools
At the tremor of his footsteps Little transparent eft-like things sank And disappeared into the wet sand, But he…
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