Knocking on Shakespeare’s door
I have the habit, when reading a collection of essays, of not reading them in order. I’m pretty sure I’m…
Wicked wit
The title alludes to Jonathan Meades’s first collection of criticism, Peter Knows What Dick Likes, and to the album by…
Yummy mummy
Seventh Seltzer is a nice family man, working as a publisher’s reader in New York, who happens to come from…
Straight to number one
Pop music has always been, to those who love it, to some degree tribal or factional; fans like to carve…
Last lines on Brexit from Geoffrey Hill
In 2012 OUP published Geoffrey Hill’s Collected Poems; they could have waited, because they’re now going to need another edition.…
The body count piles up in Mick Herron’s London Rules
The well-written spy novel is not a hotly contested field. Le Carré, Fleming, Deighton, a few Greenes, and that’s largely…
