Latest Blogs
Can spring be far away?
When icicles hang by the wall and you stop by woods on a snowy evening, it’s time for a list of the best poetic celebrations of winter.
We Three Kings
January 6th: a day to eat king cakes, for women to sit back and put their feet up – sometimes – and for well-meaning men to get their comeuppance
Costa Section Winners Announced
Like Floyd Mayweather Junior in boxing, Costa poetry winner Don Paterson is not just technically immaculate; he hurts, hitting hard and gifted with a true fighter’s armoury of punches.
Controlling rents, ensuring supply
In the German rental model there are considerable advantages for those renting, primarily security of tenure and protection against arbitrary increases. There are long-term advantages for landlords too. But principally housing is regarded as a social asset, which ensures citizens are housed.
Let it all hang out. Not
I was like ‘rules matter, clarity matters’ and this like 70-year-old professor of linguistics was like ‘keep your hair on, you’re so uptight, it’s about expressing yourself”. Jeez!
Upper and Not So Upper
Nancy Mitford was one of the famous Mitfords. Her sister Unity fell in love with Hitler and shot herself when war broke out. Nancy’s sparkling and mildly satirical novels of class have been reissued by Penguin with new covers that can only be described as spiffing.
The Dublin Vertigo
There are many reasons to change one’s name: to keep a step ahead of the law, to be accepted in a different or superior social circle, or, just conceivably, to dump the last politically determined change and return a little closer to one’s origins.
Every Home Should Have One
A new anthology of the writings of the Irish Revival demonstrates that literature is written in a context. But if the ludicrous decision to downgrade the teaching of history in secondary schools is not reversed, similar volumes in the future will be incomprehensible.
The Joy of Killing
In July 1941 more than 340 Jews were beaten, humiliated and then murdered in Jedwabne in Poland by a large group of local men. Shortly afterwards the wife of one of the killers turned up to Mass wearing a fur coat that had only recently been worn to a synagogue.
Helmut Schmidt: 1918 – 2015
The former German chancellor, who died today, was one of the major figures of the European centre left in the twentieth century. Though this centre-leftism was a different thing from Blairism, Schmidt was a tough and practical man. People who have visions should see the doctor, he thought.
Fire On The Peforming Bears
The great French socialist leader Leon Blum was much hated by the extreme right in the 1930s, and largely because he was Jewish. It should also however be remembered that he was much hated by the extreme left.
The Making of Britain
In 1603, William Shakespeare was, among other things, an English dramatist. With the accession of James Stuart of Scotland to the English throne he was to have to learn to become a British one.