A Child of the Sun
Katherine Mansfield and Psychology, eds. Clare Hanson, Gerri Kimber, Todd Martin, Edinburgh University Press, September 2016, 224 pp, £70.00 (hardback) Katherine…
Links in the Chain
Kandinsky, Marc and Der Blaue Reiter, Edited by Ulf Kuster for Fondaton Beyeler Beyeler Stiftung, Wyss Foundation 2016 It…
Statues Missing Chunks
In the Roman Art wing of who-knows-which museum ancient torsos are on exhibit some of which are missing chunks. Time…
A Trinidadian Friendship
Morning, Paramin, Derek Walcott and Peter Doig, Faber & Faber, November 2016, 116 pp, £22.00 (hardback) This is a lovely,…
Malraux, Camus and the Nobel Prize by Jeffrey Meyers
André Malraux (1901-76) was born in a bourgeois quarter of Paris, Albert Camus (1913-60) in a working-class district in the…
Bread and Salt
The lighthouse was somewhere in the south of his country, that stood unused in the wet smoke that rose from…
Playing Safe
Within the pretty pale pink walls of the Adolfo Mejia theatre, in the centre of Colombia’s Caribbean coastal city of…
Lemons in August
Mineral green Lisbons poised in the desert. I’m watching bees drunk with sun. A blistered leaf. Outside Phoenix, west of…
The Hurt
These days are sadness at its most vivid. You have, at dawn, at dusk, the prayer call, the Ezan ,…
Whoever is Left to Count the Grain
And measure the rings Do not leave out the xylem Of mingling auras And the sap that adheres Our dream-laden…
The Copulation of Angels
When Milton spoke of the ‘copulation of angels’ And Lear said, ‘Let copulation thrive!’ They were praising the way that…
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…