TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘The many faces of Shakespeare’….
China, America and the danger of war By Philip Zelikow
Discovering exactly what Shakespeare owned By Lucy Munro
Blake Morrison’s guide to life writing By Joyce Carol Oates
Writing about others as a means to write about yourself By Catherine Taylor
An argument for ‘British is best’
The argument of Peter Watson’s hugely ambitious The British Imagination: A history of ideas from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II is that “The essential arc of British history – intellectual and creative history, just as much as political, economic and military history – is of a small, indeed tiny, country sequestered on the north-west coast of Europe that over the centuries would forge the largest and most unlikely empire the world has seen”. It may seem odd to be reading this in the present depressed state of the nation, although Watson stresses from the outset that the concept of “the British imagination” embraces its hospitality to foreign influences and eventually to the power of a wider “Anglosphere”.
The genesis of Far from the Madding Crowd
What smartphones can’t record
Modern English translations that do justice to the work
The struggle between good and evil in William Golding’s fiction By Alan Jenkins
The many lives of W. H. Auden By Ian Sansom
Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, the controversial US tech company By Emily Jones
Why do we experience consciousness?
THE HUDSON REVIEW: The latest issue features….
ESSAYS
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘The state of British poetry’ by Tristram Fane Saunders…
The forward march of British poetry
A history of childbirth and a defence of the C-section
By Leah Hazard
Newly discovered photographs of Baudelaire’s muse
The thrill of marine archaeology
By Alan Jenkins
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘Constable vs Turner’ by Ferdinand Mount….
Turner is on our banknotes, Constable in our hearts By Ferdinand Mount
Coming out of Tate Britain just before noon on Budget Day, you are blinded by a blistering white sun behind Vauxhall Cross. The steepling glass towers south of the river are washed in an opal mist, the ziggurats of the MI6 HQ eclipsed to a ruined beige. Vauxhall Bridge gleams in the scarlet and yellow of a Turner sunset. J. M. W. would have rushed to the Embankment, whipped out his sketchbook, then worked up the whole shimmering scene into a six-footer and called it something like “The End of England”. John Constable would probably have turned away to catch the next coach to Hampstead Heath to paint Branch Hill Pond again.
How the young Dylan Thomas repeatedly stole from others By Alessandro Gallenzi
A love-hate relationship recalled by France’s ‘greatest living writer’ By Marie Darrieussecq
Why stylish stationery won’t change your life By Ian Sansom
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘A Snail’s Tale – An unpublished story by Sylvia Townsend Warner…
Tactful notes from a literary self-promoter By Nicola Shulman
Marking the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth By Devoney Looser
Irritating professors for the ages By Peter Thonemann
An unpublished story by Sylvia Townsend Warner, with a commentary by Peter Swaab By Sylvia Townsend Warner
Charting Seamus Heaney’s Wordsworthian journey By Roy Foster
Writing novels by AI – and committee By Gordon Fraser
Our contributors choose their favourites
Simone Weil’s ethical life class By A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘Extinction rebellion’ – How Tennyson speaks to our fears.
The troubled history of US-China relations By Katie Stallard
Iris Murdoch’s unseen poetry, transcribed for the first time By Miles Leeson
Tennyson’s embrace of science and catastrophe theory By Angela Leighton
Tales of the uncanny from a master of ambiguity By Joyce Carol Oates
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘Artist in the making: Joyce Carol Oates on Sally Mann’s photographic craft’
The British upper classes today By Michael Hall
A how-to book by ‘one of the greatest’ American photographers’ By Joyce Carol Oates
László Krasznahorkai, Nobel laureate in literature By George Szirtes
Religion, immigration, gender politics and severed heads By Mary Beard
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