Words from the Departed
Some notable writers left us in the course of 2013. The Guardian remembers some of them through quotations from their remarks about their work or writing, or politics.
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Time Please
Which is more important? Knowing something first or knowing it correctly? And is it possible that the frenetic pursuit of the first might make the second increasingly unlikely?
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Get thee behind me
For centuries he had found work for idle hands, and his picture book was becoming increasingly popular. Then, at the end of the seventeenth century, some people started saying he didn’t exist.
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Cuisine versus Cucina
The French can be very high and mighty about their slow-cooked tripe in the manner of Caen, but there’s more to Italian cooking than red sauce, Elizabeth David insisted.
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Oh my God, not a recovery please
If we are indeed very slowly, very hesitatingly, and with no guarantees, coming out of the worst of our economic depression, everyone will be very happy – except the intellectuals.
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Themmens get everything
A wide river can separate people on either bank. It has also been known, from time to time, to keep them safe.
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A Gulf not a Channel
The English do not understand the French, or at any rate didn’t until the master thinkers of structuralism and poststructuralism began to invade their universities.
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Sterne at 300
The publication of Tristram Shandy, an anti-novel that became a model for many more, transformed him from an obscure country clergyman into the toast of London.
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Two Cheers for Democracy
A new book by David Runciman argues that democracies are superior to autocracies when it comes to riding out crises. Perhaps, but are they any longer fully democratic?
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Letter from Dr Zareer Masani
The author of a biography of Macaulay replies to criticism in a recent review.