Romantic Experiment

James Michie, 17 June 1982

“... baby – up the wall And from a bottle on the topmost shelf Marked Danger, Do Not Touch, or Self, Swallow, and in the slow paralysis And death that follow scrawl In blood, vomit or piss: ‘God damn you all, God bless you too – but don’t drink ...”

A Mistrust of Thunder and Lightning

Jeremy Waldron: Hobbes, 20 January 2000

Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes 
by Quentin Skinner.
Cambridge, 477 pp., £15.95, July 1997, 0 521 59645 9Show More
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“... rational choice theorist. We may be interested in game-theoretic models of social contract among self-interested rational agents, says Skinner, but it’s wrong to assume that Hobbes was, or to assume he was simply because some of his vocabulary matches our vocabulary, without considering the context in which that vocabulary was used. Skinner’s ...”

On Resistance

Adam Phillips, 14 August 2025

“... prediction or prophecy; it is often quick and concise knowledge of the future in the service of self-protection, even though one doesn’t always know what the danger is, nor what it is about oneself that might be harmed. And, perhaps above all, one must first have been drawn to something or someone – noticed them, picked them out, felt something in their ...”

Between Worlds

Edward Said, 7 May 1998

“... too great. In other words, there was an existential as well as a felt political need to bring one self into harmony with the other, for as the debate about what had once been called ‘the Middle East’ metamorphosed into a debate between Israelis and Palestinians, I was drawn in, ironically enough, as much because of my capacity to speak as an American ...”

Actual Outer Margins

Ian Patterson, 19 March 2026

“... preferring the seabed pattern of novel subjection to thin airor elastic plywood art society as self-restraint is so apical no it isn’tpresent by risk nor will be. What greenfinch anxiety who assumed toknow would be meaningless reduction disrupting rough trusty scaleif modified out of nothing so as not to be based on anyone else’s ideaof breakfast or ...”

At the Courtauld

T.J. Clark: Symptoms of Cézannoia, 2 December 2010

“... genre’s suppositions and implicit bargains. That is the point. They are awkward, resplendent, self-possessed men. Working men, enduring the attention of the odd son of a dead banker (who paid well). They are, it now seems possible to see, monuments to a specific way of life – to another kind of balance between inwardness and exteriority – but we are ...”

At the Guggenheim

Hal Foster: Italian Futurism , 20 March 2014

“... the strident Marinetti, these artists, architects, photographers, writers and composers were the self-appointed shock troops of the new. They were ready, rhetorically at least, to ditch traditional culture, calling for museums to be set ablaze and Venice to be paved over, and disdained liberal institutions, railing against the vagaries of parliamentary ...”

Sightbites

Jonathan Meades: Archigram’s Ghost, 21 May 2020

Archigram: The Book 
edited by Dennis Crompton.
Circa, 300 pp., £95, November 2018, 978 1 911422 04 4Show More
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“... City’ (1964) In the sixty years since its founding, Archigram has become a self-mythologising, energetically self-celebratory bastion of old-fashioned avant-gardism, as tied to its era as popping out to a Schooner Inn for a half of Red Barrel. The former members have sedulously controlled their ...”

Alan Bennett remembers Peter Cook

Alan Bennett, 25 May 1995

“... he was intolerant of humbug: detecting it (and quite often mistakenly), he would fly into a huge self-fuelling rage which propelled him into yet more fantasy and even funnier jokes. So it’s hard to praise him to his face, even his dead face, that quizzical smile never very far away, making a mockery of the sincerest sentiments. So he would be surprised, I ...”

At the Movies

Michael Wood: ‘300’, 26 April 2007

300 
directed by Zack Snyder.
December 2006Show More
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“... you call fanaticism when you’re trying to be creepy rather than dogmatic. In one corner, the self-punishing, war-loving, homophobic (no connection to those ‘boy-loving’ Athenians) Spartans, who on grounds that escape me completely are meant to represent reason, justice, law, freedom and logic, to borrow a few grand words that appear in both book and ...”

At the National Gallery

Peter Campbell: Vermeer and de Hooch, 5 July 2001

“... proportion of the dozen or so pictures safely attributed to Fabritius are on show here: two self-portraits, The Goldfinch from the Mauritshuis, a sleeping sentry and the National Gallery’s own perspective peepshow. The finish of his pictures (also unlike Delft) is painterly, not smooth. In the goldfinch you can count the strokes – one for each wing ...”

Reflections on the Independence Referendum

“... machine in Scotland. No longer. When large numbers stop believing that they can exercise political self-determination within the existing social order they begin to look beyond traditional governing parties. On the Continent (and in England) this has led to the growth of the right. In Scotland what is being demanded is national, social and political ...”

Scenario for a Wonderful Tomorrow

Wolfgang Streeck: Merkel Changes Her Mind Again, 31 March 2016

Europe’s Orphan: The Future of the Euro and the Politics of Debt 
by Martin Sandbu.
Princeton, 336 pp., £19.95, September 2015, 978 0 691 16830 2Show More
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“... of German history. Very much like the US, German elites project what they collectively regard as self-evident, natural and reasonable onto their outside world, and are puzzled that anyone could possibly fail to see things the way they do. Perhaps the dissenters suffer from cognitive deficits and require education by Schäuble in the Eurogroup classroom? One ...”

Vorsprung durch Techno

Ian Penman, 10 September 2020

Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany 
by Uwe Schütte.
Penguin, 316 pp., £9.99, February, 978 0 14 198675 3Show More
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“... Screen on the Green, which mixed rad new post-punk bands with Herzog films. (Memo to my younger self: really not a good idea to take amphetamines before going to see 16-rpm directors like Herzog and Tarkovsky.) Artists like Fassbinder and Kiefer also aimed for something like Schütte’s beloved Gesamtkunstwerk, but theirs was a far messier business; it ...”

Pepys’s Place

Pat Rogers, 16 June 1983

The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Vol X: Companion and Vol XI: Index 
edited by Robert Latham.
Bell and Hyman, 626 pp., £19.50, February 1983, 0 7135 1993 2Show More
The Diary of John Evelyn 
edited by John Bowle.
Oxford, 476 pp., £19.50, April 1983, 0 19 251011 8Show More
The Brave Courtier: Sir William Temple 
by Richard Faber.
Faber, 187 pp., £15, February 1983, 0 571 11982 4Show More
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“... seal the facts up. When you get beyond their propositional status, all the remarks turn out to be self-communing, self-consoling, self-warning, self-promising, self-cajoling. The illocutionary act takes place in a ...”
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