Light, and bright, and sparkling
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was published two hundred years ago today. Miss Austen couldn’t wait to try it out on the neighbours.
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Was the Famine a Genocide?
Two historians clash in a Belfast radio interview on the Famine. Did the British deliberately plan for genocide by ‘allowing nature to run its course’?
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Dreamtime in Llareggub
A little bit of Under Milk Wood for St David’s Day. Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard rehearses her two late husbands.
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Moscow Year Zero
A detailed study of Moscow in the year that Stalin’s purges got into full swing is, writes one reviewer, an almost impossibly rich masterpiece.
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Gentleman At Arms
Evelyn Waugh writes to his friend Dorothy Lygon about his wartime adventures and work on what was to become Brideshead Revisited.
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European Anti-Semitism
American novelist and short story writer Cynthia Ozick claims to find an ineradicable anti-Semitism at work in Europe. But her definition of the phenomenon may not be the same as yours or mine.
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The Sine Qua Non of Civilisation
Fifty years ago four New York friends met for dinner and came up with a project which was to leave a lasting mark on American intellectual life.
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The Impossible Bookshop
There are two ways of looking at it: bookshops are about atmosphere, character, associations, romance; or they are about books. If we go for the former we soon won’t have any bookshops.
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Who will own ebooks?
A dispute between France and Luxembourg and the European Commission seems to have implications for the question of whether individual European companies will be able to thrive in the electronic book market or if it will be a case of (American) winner takes all.
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The Great Pilgrim Hat Mirror Scam
If Johann Gutenberg’s first money-making wheeze had gone just a little differently he might not have bothered inventing printing.