“The Secret Painter” here is Joe Tucker’s uncle Eric, apparently the most unaesthetic of men, inhabiting the most unaesthetic of places, the industrial town of Warrington, Lancashire. He kept his trousers up... Read more »
Through all the blood and ice of Russian history, the national music has been a balm. Composers and performers have given a voice to the soul of their people, in all its... Read more »
Santiago de Chile, 1986, in the dying days of Pinochet’s dictatorship: the streets are flooded with teargas and littered with the remains of anti-government protests. The military is losing its grip on power,... Read more »
Of all the great intellectuals of the Renaissance, Pico della Mirandola is surely the most personally captivating. “He wins one on,” as the Victorian essayist Walter Pater put it, his life having... Read more »
At 88 years of age, Pope Francis is the oldest pontiff for more than a century. Yet, after major surgery in 2023, and persistent knee problems that require the use of a... Read more »
At about 4pm, the riot police closed in, blocking exits from Parliament Square. After a heart-catching winter sunset, temperatures plummeted towards freezing and Dan Hancox was not alone in wanting to go... Read more »
“We have two lives,” Dr Matt Morgan writes, before clarifying: “The second begins when you realise you have [only] one.” Sometimes, as the case studies in this book detail, this realisation comes... Read more »
For Paul Scraton, a British writer who has lived in Berlin for over 20 years, place is what you carry around in your imagination. The acknowledgments to his second novel inform us that on Holy Island/Ynys... Read more »
Invisible Dog by Fabio Morábito, translated by Richard Gwyn (Carcanet, £12.99) Mexican writer Morábito is a real discovery: reading him is like being in the room with someone who trusts you enough... Read more »