Academic critics of Dryden or Pope were not in the habit, the last time I checked, of interspersing their monographs with reminiscences of sex clubs in Manhattan. An affectionate excursus on that ...

It is timely, in these days of Extinction Rebellion and anti-aviation protests, to examine the philosophy of travel. Why do we go, what do we get out of it, and is the very act of boarding a plane ...

The life of Eric Hobsbawm is a study in the making of a reputation. Like many other intellectuals who spent their early years in interwar central Europe, he turned to communism as a means of resisting ...

Being a grown-up is all too often a serious business: rarely do we allow ourselves a moment to review life through childlike eyes. Finnish writer Selja Ahava grapples with this in her second novel, ...

Doctor Dolittle in the Moon may be one of the animal communicator’s less well-known adventures, but it served as childhood inspiration for the science writer Oliver Morton. In The Moon, Morton ...

The fifties was the great decade of radio soap-opera. I myself am always very mindful of this aspect of the period since my own godmother devised and was the principal coordinating scriptwriter of Mrs ...

Thomas W Hodgkinson: There Was No Sorcerer - Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops by Tim Robey Thomas W Hodgkinson - There Was No Sorcerer Thomas W Hodgkinson: There Was No ...

If one goal of modern biography is to lay bare secrets and perversions, then Salvador Dalí must necessarily make a disappointing subject, for he spent a lucrative lifetime laying them all bare himself ...

I was telling my friend Moon Biglow the other day that I was going to Hampstead to see some literary people. ‘Oh, littery people,’ said Moon – because that’s how he talks. ‘Oh, Hampstead!’ said Moon. ...

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more. Thomas W Hodgkinson - There Was No Sorcerer Thomas W Hodgkinson: There Was No Sorcerer - Box Office Poison: ...

This is a book about people, in V S Naipaul’s opening words, a book of stories. He sees himself returning to his initial literary vocation, as a manager of narrative, giving news about others. The ...

Along Ireland’s five-thousand-mile coastline there are more than two hundred offshore islands. In 1841, just before the Great Famine, nearly 35,000 people lived on them, but by 2016 only 8,756 souls ...