Collection

Hang Santa

Writing about Christmas by Brigid Brophy, Charles Nicholl, Wendy Doniger, Terry Castle, Frank Kermode, Hilary Mantel, James Wood and Alice Spawls.

To be continued

Brigid Brophy, 6 November 1980

The writer destiny has up its sleeve, who cannot be appointed but must messianically recognise himself, will be confident not only that he can provide a plausible solution to the mystery of Edwin Drood but that he has solved the deeper mystery of The Mystery of Edwin Drood – namely, what sort of book it was to be.

Getting high

Charles Nicholl, 19 March 1987

You don’t frequent crack-houses. You don’t shoot smack, drop acid, skin-pop speed or blow dope. You have nothing to do with the 1.8 billion tranquillisers prescribed in Britain every...

Hang Santa

Wendy Doniger, 16 December 1993

The authors of this collection of essays are social anthropologists who follow the structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss, literally – an essay by him comes first, after Daniel...

My Heroin Christmas: Art Pepper and Me

Terry Castle, 18 December 2003

Living without love is like not living at all.

Art Pepper, 1958

Writing this in San Francisco, having just come back from San Diego and a heroin Christmas at my mother’s. Not that I...

Was it a supernova? the Nativity

Frank Kermode, 4 January 2007

Very few schoolboys know that of the four Gospels only two offer any account of the conception and birth of Jesus, and even those schoolboys probably care little that Matthew and Luke, the two...

On Not Going Home

James Wood, 20 February 2014

A panic suddenly overtakes me, and I wonder: how did I get here? And then the moment passes, and ordinary life closes itself around what had seemed, for a moment, a desperate lack.

Christmas Trees

Alice Spawls, 5 January 2017

What do we do with the wanwood when the new year comes? In the 16th century, after the feast and the dancing, the tree would be ceremonially burned, marking the end of festivities with a final brilliant spectacle, which does seem better than leaving it on the street for the council to collect.

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