Look at the birds of the air
Gilbert White, an 18th century country parson and naturalist, wrote in sumptuous detail of the animal and bird life he observed around him. Here he is on the varieties of birdsong.
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The Literary Racket
Edgar Allan Poe was resolutely unimpressed by the modus operandi of the press, and in particular those sections of it in which literary opinions were offered and books reviewed.
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Flattering the people
If, as politicians like to assert, the people aren’t stupid, why do we have a word for it? Surely it wasn’t coined just for Afghan hounds.
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More gin for the editor please
William Maginn, who died 170 years ago today, was a child prodigy from Cork who became a brilliant newspaper editor in London. But sadly, the drink got to him.
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Home is a sad place
With his fortieth birthday the realisation came to Philip Larkin that he had done nothing with the `fat fillet-steak’ part of life.
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The sentences in my head
László Krasnahorkai talks to George Szirtes about how he writes and what he reads.
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Why they went to war
Why did the soldiers join up and go to be slaughtered in France, Belgium or Gallipoli? Sometimes because the misery of their lives made them think that anything would be better.
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Forty days of sunshine
The Book of Kells will be joined by some other outstanding Irish manuscripts on display in Trinity College Dublin in 2016.
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A bookselling institution
The famous Foyle’s bookshop in central London is moving to a spectacularly beautiful new premises just down the road from its traditional Charing Cross Road pitch.
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If you gotta go …
Former French prime minister Michel Rocard, in a resounding ‘J’accuse!’, tells the British that if they want to leave the EU they should just do that, and quickly too. Really, they’ve done quite enough damage inside.