Latest Blogs
A New Novel from Mr Joyce
A hundred years ago Joyce’s Portrait first appeared in the magazine The Egoist.
A Grand Moan
The English know that nothing is really ever going to change, so, well, you have to larf, innit? But they are missing out on the far superior feelings of satisfaction and self-righteousness to be gleaned from denunciation.
Montaigne in Rome
Michel de Montaigne set out from France in the summer of 1580 on a long journey which was to take him through Switzerland, Germany and Austria, over the Alps and into Italy. Many things interested him in the life of the Rome of Gregory XIII, but he was struck by how little of the ancient city remained.
Seamus Heaney in Denmark
Bruce Clunies-Ross remembers a festive meeting of the poet, a Danish expert on sheela-na-gigs and PV Glob, the royal antiquary who wrote of Tollund Man, the natural warmth of the gathering further enhanced by glasses of a Danish spirit flavoured with bog myrtle and a variety of Tuborg made specially for the Danish court.
Foreplay
Handsome men are a dime a dozen, believe me. And what are they going to do? Sit on you, that’s what they’ll do. But Raymond Chandler, oh Raymond, Raymond. There was a guy who knew how to treat furniture.
The First World War – Who Done It?
Germany, like Britain, is seeing the publication of a slew of books on the hundredth anniversary of the Great War.
Blessing of the Animals, 1787
Goethe, visiting Rome, stumbled upon Neddy, Bluebell and Dobbin receiving the blessings of the Lord. It made his day.
Morrissey wins TS Eliot prize
Co Armagh-born Sinead Morrissey is the winner of the prestigious British poetry prize, following in the footsteps of Heaney, Muldoon, Carson and Longley.
Disappearing Librarians
There are 100,000 fewer librarians in the United States than there were twenty years ago. And in Ireland we are planning to open libraries with no staff. Oh brave new world!
La France en colère
Newsweek is not letting those cheese-eating surrender monkeys off the hook.
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.
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?