Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
Kith and Kine
A compendious work on the ostensibly obscure and specialist subject of the origins of cattle breeds manages to incorporate a good deal of fascinating human history over several millennia, recalling in the process the literary work of Herman Melville or…
Let Them Have It
You’ve either got or you haven’t got style. AA Gill had it in spades, but he also had substance, convictions, passion and a devil-may-care attitude to the proprieties that often got him into trouble with the many people he offended.
Nicola Gordon Bowe (1948-2018)
Nicola Gordon Bowe, who died suddenly last month, was an expert on the work of stained glass artists Harry Clarke and Wilhelmina Geddes. She was the pioneer writer who fought to have craft and design recognised intellectually as operating on…
Homing Signals
Leontia Flynn’s latest collection, which was shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize, gives shape to the ‘music of words’ that reverberates within our quotidian existence, channelling it internally and then broadcasting it back to the outside world in unexpected forms.
Machine World
A perceptive essay on technology in the nineteenth century indicates why that era had such a bearing on the times to come in highlighting the discrepancy between our technological capabilities and what our mind is able to penetrate, between our…
From the Battlefield
Robert Lowell’s ‘For the Union Dead’ is first and foremost an American poem. It is about a nation born in courage and descending into slack and rust. It is about valour and the corruption of valour. It asks which noble…
Gentrifying Hegel
It is quite astonishing that there is no reference to Slavoj Žižek in a massive new volume which calls itself a handbook to Hegel. While the Slovenian philosopher can be challenging, his work reaches parts of Hegel that are not…
A Life Composed
Celebrated biographer Claire Tomalin tackles the subject of her own life with detachment and calm. Her concise and slightly formal prose strikes the right note to deal with sorrows and adversities, though occasionally one could wish for just a little…
Our Stuff Good, Your Stuff Bad
The differences between Catholic and Protestant beliefs have been exploited by secular rulers for their own gain and have led to wars and much bloodshed. Perhaps the greatest problem has been the insistence of secular authorities on imposing uniformity of…
Van The Youth
The postwar decades in Northern Ireland were ones of modest prosperity, and the bitter conflict that had marked the birth of the state seemed on its way to becoming memory. For some – mainly Protestants ‑ the 1950s and early…
Destined for Radicalism
Hanna Sheehy Skeffington was a suffragette and a Sinn Féiner, and in that order. For her, national sovereignty did not overshadow other concerns and, unlike Constance Markievicz, she never considered female suffrage secondary to the struggle for Irish independence.
Strangers in a Strange Land
Emigration into postwar Britain was encouraged, but the only plan was to secure bodies for no-collar jobs (Irish labourers, Punjabi foundry workers) or to maintain essential services (Barbadians for the buses, Irish women for nursing). It was bodies that were…