Latest Blogs
A Literary Terrorist
One critic has compared reading Charles Maturin’s Melmoth to climbing Mount Everest, yet the novel continues to appeal, in part perhaps because of its role in creating a genre that is still potent in global culture –in Hollywood movies, popular music and manga animation.
The Pleasures of Destruction
Book-burning is a recurring element in our cultural history, though mostly the authorities have found censorship and regulation more effective. For the people, however, a good show is always popular and great satisfaction can often be derived from the destruction of symbolic goods.
Women in the Library
Like teaching, librarianship is a profession that has long been associated with women and offered them employment opportunities when many other paths were closed off. And occasionally too they were cherished.
Hope Springs Eternal
In 1983 the British Labour Party campaigned on a radical left-wing manifesto that delivered it its worst general election result since 1918. Now, it seems, it wants to do it all over again.
Yellow socks and guacamole
Is an apparent lack of intellectual or cultural sophistication an essentially English trait? It is certainly one that can bear fruit for the populist politician.
Democracy and Numbers
Does democracy mean that everyone has the right to have their will implemented? What if it clashes with everyone else’s will?
The Tories, Europe and Scotland
If the UK votes to leave the European Union could Scotland be dragged out against its will? And in those circumstances could another independence referendum be resisted?
Death and Life of the Bookshop
Adam Gopnik laments the recent closure of a famous Parisian bookshop. Elsewhere, however, la lutte continue, the fight continues.
Don’t understand, just be afraid
After graduating from Columbia, John Berryman headed to Cambridge. ‘Yeats, Yeats, I’m coming! It’s me!’ a later poem has him exclaiming from the ship.
Britain Brought To Book
Back in 1988, in a speech in Bruges, Margaret Thatcher laid down the law to the Europeans as to how they should run their show. She did at least acknowledge, however, that Europe was something with which Britain was connected.
In Praise Of Ali Smith
Alex Clark pays tribute to novelist Ali Smith for her generous work on behalf of other literary practitioners, and in particular her championing of first-time authors.
Misunderstanding Orwell
‘Nineteen-Eighty Four’ was first published sixty-six years ago today. Some people seemed to think that Big Brother was based on the unlikely figure of Clement Attlee.