The New Criterion – The September 2024 issue features‘The red star returns’; The trouble with Delmore; Churchill endures; Charles Ive’s “let out” souls; Theater, Arts, Music and The Media….
Arresting scenes
On John Constable’s The Hay Wain & the foundations of the West.
We write as The New Criterion’s annual period of aestivation enters its home stretch. The cicadas are buzzing, the days are noticeably shorter, and the leaves—some of them—are already edged with brown. Certain summers feature quiet expanses of lazy days. This one was different. In July, Donald Trump, except for the tip of his right ear, dodged a would-be assassin’s bullet; Joe Biden dropped (or, we now know, was pushed) out of the 2024 presidential race but, as of this writing, remains president; Kamala Harris, Biden’s vice president, stepped into the vacancy and magically became the new candidate for president, choosing the Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate.
@nplusonemag (August 16, 2024): The ‘Inside Job’ issue featuresPope Fiction, My AI Could Paint That, Literal Death Drive, Raven Leilani on Grief Writing; Biden – A Retrospective and A Satire by Saidiya Hartman…
Times Literary Supplement (August 14, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Guy vs the Spies’ – Robert Cecil’s secret intelligence network; The new Cold War; On annihilation; What anxiety means; G.K. Chesterton’s Notting Hill…
This week’s @TheTLS, featuring Diarmaid MacCulloch on Tudor and Stuart espionage; @owenmatth on cold wars past and present; @TomCook24 on Shakespearean sexualities; Fiona Green on Emily Dickinson’s letters; Anna Katharina Schaffner on the Rhine; @suzifeay on Gayl Jones – and more pic.twitter.com/uHdRgW0dOs
Francesca Peacock roots through the archives for a deeper understanding of scandal and speech in an essay from the LARB Quarterly issue no. 42, “Gossip.”
Country Life Magazine (August 14, 2024): The latest issue features‘Save the Albion Cow’ – It’s rarer than a Giant Panda; Old houses, new technology; Hot and Steamy – Why the pressure cooker is back and Whizz kids – What made Elizabeth I, Brunel and Nelson special…
Breed for victory
Our treasured native livestock breeds are in danger of being lost, yet they have a crucial role to play, believes Kate Green
Levelling up
Anyone waiting with trepidations for the A-level results should take heart from the likes of Nelson and Brunel, says Alice Loxton
If walls could talk
Old houses with poor wifi need not be denied new gadgets, from wireless lighting to kettles that can be switched on remotely. Julie Harding taps her screen
What makes you click?
From a hollowed-out cow to autofocus and gyro-stabilised cameras, clever ideas continue to transform wildlife photography. Amie Elizabeth White takes a look down the lense.
Full steam ahead
Neil Buttery fires up the pressure cooker, back in our kitchens and tenderising those bones
Paint your wagon
Sturdy, hardworking and now prized for their rarity, farm wagons were key to rural life in times past. Jack Watkins rolls out the surviving examples.
Country Life’s tech commandments
Follow thou Toby Keel’s wise advice for digital life and thou shalt not be shunned in society
Planting for the future
The new generation is building on a fine legacy of gardening and travel at Bryngwyn Hall in Powys, where Caroline Donald wanders among trees gathered from far-flung countries
Foraging
John Wright sets off into the woods in search of meaty rot fungi, the magnificent chicken of the woods and its cousin, joy-inducing hen of the woods
Waiter! My soup is cold
It might be an acquired taste, but gazpacho — recipe of your choice — is worth tasting again. Tom Parker Bowles dips his spoon into a Spanish favourite
‘To me, Song for Octave welcomes you into a different world. A dreamland in slow motion. I imagine being a child and walking in a glass house for the very first time, watching the rays of sunshine coming through the leaves of a big tree. It’s a quiet and peaceful conversation between light and shadow. (Pure and beautiful).‘
Rich in contemporary colour and contrast, LIFE – Mari Samuelsen’s third album for Deutsche Grammophon – is inspired by her experience of becoming a mother. Known for her vibrant and imaginative programming as well as her passionate and virtuosic playing, the Norwegian violinist has created a kaleidoscopic musical reflection of some of the emotional discoveries that come with parenthood.
The album presents music by Olivia Belli, Bryce Dessner, Ludovico Einaudi, Nils Frahm, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Mário Laginha, Hania Rani, Max Richter and Steve Reich, with a dash of Schubert also thrown into the mix. Samuelsen was joined at Teldex Studios in Berlin last autumn by a small group of fellow musicians, including the string players of Scoring Berlin, conducted by Jonathan Stockhammer. LIFE comes out digitally and on vinyl on 23 August 2024.
London Review of Books (LRB) – August 7 , 2024: The latest issue features ‘Henry James Hot-Air Balloon’ – “The Prefaces” by Henry James; Trivialized to Death – “Reading Genesis” by Marilynne Robinson; Different for Girls By Jean McNicol…
The first time the man heard God, he uprooted his entire life, though he was very old. Then God appeared to him in person, an event which would embarrass later thinkers. God made the man an impossible promise in the shape of a son. His wife was ninety, and she laughed. When the child arrived, it was hardly unreasonable to think it a miracle. They named the child after the laughter.
In 1904 Henry James’s agent negotiated with the American publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons to produce a collected edition of his works. The New York Edition of the Novels and Tales of Henry James duly appeared in 1907-9. It presented revised texts of both James’s shorter and longer fiction, with freshly written prefaces to each volume. It didn’t include everything: ‘I want to quietly disown a few things by not thus supremely adopting them,’ as James put it. The ‘disowned’ works included some early gems such as The Europeans. The labour of ‘supremely adopting’ the stuff he still thought worthy was grinding. He worked on the new prefaces, which he described as ‘freely colloquial and even, perhaps, as I may say, confidential’ (though James’s notion of the ‘freely colloquial’ is perhaps not everyone’s) during the years 1905 to 1909. In some respects, the venture was not a success. ‘Vulgarly speaking,’ James said of the New York Edition, ‘it doesn’t sell.’
A week before the start of the Paris Olympics, Shoko Miyata, the 19-year-old captain of the Japanese women’s gymnastics team, was forced to withdraw from the competition by her national association. She had been reported to the Japan Gymnastics Association for smoking and drinking (on separate occasions, once for each offence). The president of the JGA, Tadashi Fujita, announced that Miyata had been sent home, and bowed deeply.
Country Life Magazine (August 7, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Huts for Heroes’ – Where adventures start…
A consolation and pleasure
Could Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert, be considered an architect? He thought so — and Michael Hall tends to agree
The legacy
Carla Passino salutes the modest Henry Tate, whose name will live forever in the art world
The secret history of flowers
Healing, revealing, defence against thieving, our wildflowers’ names tell the story of our ancestors. John Lewis-Stempel reads the leaves
Up where the air is clear
An Antarctic explorer’s base or a Scottish fisherman’s shelter, the humble hut is a crucial element in stirring tales. Robin Ashcroft opens the doors
You rang, your majesty?
Even the most distasteful jobs could offer compensations to savvy servants in the Royal Household, finds Susan Jenkins
Going Dutch
The great Netherlandish masters have no equal in admirers and influence, believes Michael Hall
Harriet Hastings’s favourite painting
The biscuiteer picks a haunting scene in a lonely hotel room
Against the Grain
Carla Carlisle pays tribute to the memory of a farmer, honest broadcaster and dear friend
Bottoms up
What do the white behinds of rabbits, deer and foxes really say? Laura Parker deciphers scuts, rumps and rears
Summer’s last stand
Securing the harvest is the weather watcher’s concern in August, says Lia Leendertz
The good stuff
Hetty Lintell wraps up in style ready to hit the beach
Interiors
A party-ready sitting room and stylish touches for a home office
London Life
Rooftop cocktails
Wiggy Hindmarch, wine cellars and rosebay willowherb
William Hosie’s capital characters
Richard MacKichan on the British Museum Reading Room’s return
Presiding spirits
The fourth generation to nurture the garden of Glin Castle, Co Limerick, Ireland, is doing her predecessors proud. Caroline Donald explores a windswept haven beside the Shannon
Kitchen garden cook
Melanie Johnson conjures up treats with courgette flowers
It’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it
Even the tiniest town garden can offer views and wildlife to rival open countryside, believes city dweller Jonathan Notley
Travel
Pamela Goodman gives in to whimsy in Wales
Harry Hastings delights in the Art Deco Hotel Casa Lucía in Argentina
Rosie Paterson rounds up the best new openings in Greece
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
LA Review of Books (August 13, 2024) – The latest issue, 
The New Yorker (August 12, 2024):
Boomers Daily 