The Sun shines on Opera
I will always remember my first visit to Glyndebourne. It was a Sunday and I was the countertenor in Westminster…
A Precious and Fragile Gift
States of Mind: Tracing the Edges of Consciousness, Wellcome Collection, London, until 16 October 2016 ‘. . . the unconscious…
Visions of Genius
Hieronymus Bosch – Visions of Genius, Het Noord-Brabants Museum, s’ Hertogenbosch, until 8 May 2016 Five hundred years on from…
All the Russias
Russia And The Arts, The National Gallery, London, until 26 June 2016 The National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition Russia And The…
Harmonious Collision
Les Impressionnistes en Normandie, Musée Jacquemart-André, until 25 July Chefs-d’oeuvre de Budapest, Musée du Luxembourg, until 10 July The Musée…
Political Interventions
Graham Greene: Political Writer, Michael G. Brennan, 2016, Palgrave Macmillan, 208pp, £58 (hardcover) In an interview with the Evening Standard…
Guilt-Ridden Voyage
Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey, Frances Wilson, Bloomsbury, 397pp, 2016, £25 (hardcover) His life was full of…
A Fantasia on the Nature of Genius
When the death of Peter Maxwell Davies was announced on 14 March, I took down a handful of CDs…
‘William oure brother’: 23 April 1616
A month before the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, I’m walking along the banks of the Avon, the river…
In Shadow and Blood: The Occupation of France
The Charlie Hebdo murders provoked the largest street demonstration in Paris since the Liberation of 1944. Now, in the…
Homage to a Hero and a Masterpiece: The Destruction and Rebirth of Sutherland’s Portrait of Churchill
Over sixty years on, it remains the most notorious act of wanton destruction in the history of modern British…
The New Tenants
When we go the ivy will slam a fist through the double glazing, push its fingers in between the…
Aunt Amy’s Parasol
For such a sombre woman it strikes an unexpected note of frivolity, with those flamboyant stripes of pink, white,…
Ring of Brodgar
Asking a blessing of stone. Nestled in a blaze, blue water and a cup of soft heathered hills, Orkney’s…
Mother’s Ruin
Mother’s Ruin won Third Prize in the 2016 TLM Short Story Competition. ‘Galileo was the one who thought the…
The Tulips
The Tulips enter like a corps de ballet crimson and violet vivid as wax crayons. Heads held high in expectation…
Line-Drawing
for Ken Cold, measured, you drew your father while he lay dying, teasing him into the perfection of your…
Queen of the North
to Auntie Dorothy She was the postcard, then the sea that we competed to be the first to see.…
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