Latest Blogs
Carson shortlisted for RSL Prize
Liam Carson has been shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature/Ondaatje prize for his memoir of his parents, Call Mother a Lonely Field.
The Beautiful German Language
Some people think it sounds harsh, and some very eminent Germans historically thought it wouldn’t do, but spoken by the right person it will make you swoon.
A Tale of Two Cats
A paw print found on a fifteenth century manuscript has set social media abuzz.
Those who can teach
Remembering the wonderful English actor Richard Griffiths, who died last week aged sixty-five.
COSTA PRIZE WINNERS
Hilary Mantel, after two Bookers, has won the novel category award for the Costa. The overall winner of the prize will be announced later this month.
More, please
Enough is as good as a feast. But a feast is as good as enough.
Insular Cosmopolitan
Publisher Christopher MacLehose remembers a time when emigres were prominent in London publishing and work in translation was far from unusual.
THEIR INTELLECTUALS AND OURS
An American academic finds the people he meets abroad more interesting and more widely knowledgeable than his colleagues and peers at home.
FOUR LEGS GOOD
George Orwell’s sister found that while pigs might be wonderful symbols they were also not bad eating.
THE BEATEN DOCKET
Ideas are not cost-free, argues Ronald Aronson. They have consequences, and we cannot shrug our shoulders about those and say ‘nothing to do with me’.
DRESSED TRIPE AND TIPSY FIGS
The American writer James Salter, in a piece entitled “Michelin Man” collected in the volume Eat Memory: Great Writers at the Table, traces his first connection with French food to the New York World’s Fair in 1939, which featured a restaurant at the French pavilion that everyone talked about but where few managed to get a…
WAUGH IN ABYSSINIA
Evelyn Waugh went to Abyssinia as a war reporter in 1935, where he mostly missed the war but thought the Italians were doing a good job of spreading civilisation in darkest Africa.