There are no ex-Catholics, only lapsed ones. A lapse, as the light little monosyllable suggests, is a mere temporary aberration, an ephemeral error which can always be retrieved; and even the more...
The Foundation of Empire is Art and Science. Remove them or Degrade them and the Empire is no more. Empire follows Art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose. William Blake,...
Late in 1900 H.G. Wells sat down to draft the series of articles which were to make his reputation as the foremost prophet of the new century. His working title was ‘Speculations’ or...
Metamorphoses 3, 1-136 If Cadmus is the Age of Reason – and he is if Cadmus is the State – and he is if Cadmus is Descartes with a scalpel – maybe so then Cadmus must also...
(For D.) You’ve made yourself a master of the art of touch. You play me like an instrument. While I lie passively, as you prefer – eyes closed, you’d rather that I didn’t...
The sun was tucked behind the visor as I was driving back from work; the road reached round from house to house. A horse was grazing an out-of-season cricket pitch. They were leading sheep down...
Victorian biography has recently come in clusters. In the last decade there have been four authoritative biographies of Trollope; two of Dickens; two of Wilkie Collins; three of Stevenson (one...
There is a moment in Samuel Beckett’s story ‘The Expelled’ in which the hero watches a funeral pass: Personally if I were reduced to making the sign of the cross I would set my...
It may be off-putting to think that great artists create to excite themselves sexually; yet in some degree this is probably the case. At least with quite a number. Although the obvious danger...
The thought came to Ellen in the middle of one night. First she was asleep and then she was awake with a single question in her head, as if it was asking itself so urgently it couldn’t wait...
The cathedral was not great. You were a better poet Than it was a building. I forgot To look for the graffiti of imprisoned Scots, My possible ancestors – and yours – And stood there...
The poet is not a poet in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s new novel, and the dancer is not a dancer. ‘Although her movements were always the same – she waved her arms above her head, she...
Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, which started appearing as a newspaper serial in the mid-Seventies, and in volume form a few years later, are little classics of light literature: in...
Along with other Faber authors Larkin had been circularised asking what events, if any, he was prepared to take part in to mark National Libraries Week. Larkin wrote back saying that the letter reminded...
To an admirer who wanted to meet him on account of A Shropshire Lad Housman replied discouragingly that while most men might be more interesting than their books his book was definitely more...
One of the more disarming sentences in Francisco Goldman’s impressive first novel comes near the end, when his hero-narrator, Roger Graetz, takes a bus journey up into the Guatemalan...
This beautiful, vexed and tragic novel is well served by its title, for its narrating heroine both wrestles with and represents the female forces of retribution; and since Orestes at last escapes...
This is the first full-length study of James Thomson’s life and work since Henry Salt’s in 1889. Thomson’s poem The City of Dreadful Night is known by name to many but has...