Latest Blogs
Gie fools their silk, and knaves their wine
At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth century many people were beginning to take the measure of the parasitical landowning classes. None put it all quite so succinctly as Robert Burns, born on this day in 1759.
People In Glass Houses
Fingers are being pointed at Hungary and Poland, accusing them of turning their back on European values and breeding an ugly xenophobia and populism. There may be some truth in this, but are they the only places where extreme political forces are thriving?
Joseph Roth: The Hotel Years
Journalists, according to Frederic Raphael, are the short order chefs of the writing world. With the great Joseph Roth you got more than wedges and coleslaw.
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.