Carry That Weight
Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love, James Booth, Bloomsbury, 2014, 544pp, £25 (hardback) Major modern poets are often saddled…
God’s Lonely Men: The Two De Niros
The actor Robert De Niro established his cinematic legacy playing taciturn characters whose individual standards, expectations, and inarticulateness place…
The Magic Realism of Julio Larraz
Julio Larraz Rules of Engagement ContiniArtUK Gallery 3 October – 24 November 2014 Julio Larraz, who comes from Cuba,…
The Impossible Exile
The Impossible Exile – Stefan Zweig at the End of the World, George Prochnik, Other Press, New York, 2014,…
Katherine Mansfield’s Russian Healers
During the last two years of her life, Katherine Mansfield, ailing with tuber-culosis, was attracted to her Russian ‘healers’ in…
The Journey
i.m. Charlotte Annie Bodsworth Grantham: 1944 The long road from the farm was longer then, the chickens fed, breakfast…
Whirligig
Our closest neighbour was Elrod. He lived up the road about a half-mile. His house was on the hill,…
The Girl of the Atomic Bomb
Opera Holland Park, May-August 2014 Giacomo Puccini, La Fanciulla del West Gioachino Rossini, Il Barbiere di Siviglia Francesco Cilea,…
The Rhyme of the Reddleman’s Daughter Part III
For mile on mile, and mile on mile, echoing around,
shrunk spine rattling coughs,
and a moaning helpless sound.
In the Shadow of War The Balkan Century
Sarajevo, on the 28th of June in the year ‘14, was en fête. A unique foreign delegation was coming, and the hotels were booked up; the pavements along the river were filling, the crowd’s diversity appropriate to this historically so cosmopolitan city. Could any have said exactly why they were there, or what they were looking at? Put face-to-face with History, it’s difficult to know quite where we stand.
A Basic Mistake
William S. Burroughs: A Life, Barry Miles, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014, 740pp, £30 (hardback) Considering the profligate varieties and…
Unequivocal Gent?
The Setting Sun: A Memoir of Empire and Family Secrets, Bart Moore-Gilbert, Verso Books, 2014, 288pp, £14.99 (hardback) Bart…
My London
Harry Mount is the eighth writer in the My London series. Harry is a journalist, whose latest book is…
The Paradox That Was Percy Grainger
Most people have probably heard the tune popularly known as ‘In an English Country Garden’, but equally probably most…
The Sage of Chelsea
The only known surviving diaries of a Victorian regional newspaper editor were penned by my great great uncle Anthony…
The Old West Lothian Question
Bruce Anderson’s article was commissioned by The London Magazine in response to the recent Scottish referendum. There is a…
Piazza di Spagna, 1860
On the Spanish Steps there sprawls in original sun Il Padre Eterno with his rusty coat, His bright paternal…
Rose
Let me drink rose coloured wine From your white hands. Let me look into your eyes And swoon into…
Elterwater Rain
When I came to write of it there was no rain, just the last of its ectoplasm shivering in…
Street-Combing
for O Sun’s setting behind us at 5 pm; a turquoise stripe below a rain front strokes in sudden…
Green Go
Nature’s austerities are apparent in autumn: No dense desires (leaves) define the trees Not a grain of green thoughts…
Enlightenment
The knock on the door was rapid, peremptory. Before I could answer, it opened and a tanned, silver-haired man…
Digestible Opera
The success of the Glyndebourne model, eighty years old this season, says something revealing about opera and the British…
Two Poems
Unexpected I drove north that December without expectations; behind me the old year narrowed into dark lanes of disappointment.…
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