Stephen Wilson

Stephen Wilson lives in Oxford.

Poem: ‘Restoration’

Stephen Wilson, 4 November 1993

You must have escaped in a hurry dropping so many little intimacies from our lives – thermal vests, long johns, a lace camisole, a black bow-tie, a packet of Tampax on the floor beside the bed, my old tennis-shoes (were your backs done in too?).

I picture your arrival, through the rockery, sinking your feet into heather, shrugging off rhododendron branches, strands of honeysuckle;...

Feuds and Law and Order

William Doyle, 14 September 1989

Ever since the 18th century it has been universally accepted that one of the main foundations of a civilised society is the rule of law. The Enlightenment taught that Nature itself worked by...

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Making saints

Peter Burke, 18 October 1984

There may not be any royal road to the understanding of an alien or half-alien culture – contemporary Japan, or the Medieval West – but one path which appears to lead into the interior is the study...

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A Flat in Neuilly

Douglas Johnson, 3 February 1983

In 1965 I spent several weeks working in the manuscript section of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, reading documents which were relevant to the Dreyfus Affair. After I had returned to...

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