Nigeness

 Reading this passage in one of Johnson' Rambler essays (No. 79), it is hard not to apply it to the present day, when we find ourselves...

 Today I was in the cathedral again, for Candlemas, the service that commemorates the presentation of the infant Jesus in the temple (and th...

 I see that the government, having nothing better to do, is thinking of banning the sale and use of nitrous oxide, the 'laughing gas...

 'To write poetry after Auschwitz is impossible,' as Theodor Adorno didn't say. What he did say was 'To write poetry after A...

 I was amused to learn that a newborn monkey belonging to an endangered species, the Cotton-Top Tamarin, has been given the 'endangered...

 At Christmas I was given a book that I had never heard of, and which turned out to be, for most of its length, a fascinating and absorbing ...

 Edouard Manet's birthday has come round again – 191 today – and I nearly forgot to mark it. I'll post this one simply because I lik...