If the name Lydia Davis doesn’t mean much to you, never fear: until recently it meant little to anyone,…

  2 August 2010 marked a rather unlikely milestone in the legacy of Victorian bard Ernest Dowson; some eighty people…

  Her washing line held one dress, Grace Kelly like, large pink flowers blending to the garden. Wouldn’t have fitted…

The Wedding Tree On the half-bare branches of the tulip tree old wedding invitations are hanging. The parents’ weddings, invitations…

  When Kay told his parents the topic of his final-year project, a hush descended over the room, magnifying the…

  Full Circle: How the Classical World Came Back to Us, Ferdinand Mount, Simon and Schuster, 438pp, £20 (hardback) I’d…

The Returning Sky Blocked, the drain-flood lake out front is like a dirty moat now. Workmen come sucking-up sodden, black…

  Raising Dust: A Cultural History of Dance in Palestine, Nicholas Rowe, I. B. Tauris, 256pp, £30 (hardback) At the…

  (British Museum) What flung me out of life, I do not know: all I can recall again and again…

  Many believed that Ricky was not a Baron from Naples. His father Paolo was even said to have declared,…

  I think of all those dark timbers revealed in the damp, dripping square of Flag Fen: the sinister causeway…

  As if the ground were flying, the wind rushes them from under us into a cloud of cries, the…

Men go out and gaze in astonishment at high mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad reaches of…

  Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India, William Dalrymple, Bloomsbury, 304pp, £20 (hardback) Since writing In…

  The Renegado, written by English dramatist Philip Massinger in 1623, is set in Tunis during the reign of the…

  On a morning in Lent, dense with rain, even with the wipers going it’s not easy to see the…

  Patrick Procktor: Art and Life, Ian Massey, Unicorn Press, 224pp, £40 (hardback) Patrick Procktor was one of English art’s…

  Human Chain, Seamus Heaney, Faber and Faber, 96pp, £12.99 (hardback) The ecumenical title of Seamus Heaney’s twelfth collection is…

Camille Alone Camille Claudel to Rodin While I weep, alone in my blacked-out room, you are being fêted: your long-standing…

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, like other novelists, harboured a desire for the stage. Stuck forever and a day in a…

  Long before John Huston became famous as a screenwriter, director and actor, he had studied drawing and painting in…

  Rain, Don Paterson, Faber and Faber, 61pp, £12.99 (hardback) Rain can clear the air, refresh dry perceptions, and wash…

  Bury me in a rut on Clay Pit Hill In a cardboard box to let the worms in quick…