British Library
Have we got news for you
In The Spectator office’s toilets there are framed front covers of the events that didn’t happen: Corbyn beats Boris; ‘Here’s…
Low life
After weeks of living in the 18th century, going everywhere on foot and encountering few other souls, I drove to…
Peake practice
Mervyn Peake’s unsettling illustrations reveal a gentle, kindly man with the soul of a pirate, says Daisy Dunn
Kinetic suitcases
While locked-down galleries compete to keep their artists in the public eye — or ear — by uploading interview podcasts,…
Dry cake in a red-brick crab
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and it sits like a red-brick crab on the…
Would James Joyce have finished Ulysses without coloured pens?
The Mesopotamians wrote on clay and the ancient Chinese on ox bones and turtle shells. In Egypt, in about 1,800…
To say this is a ‘once in a generation’ exhibition seems absurdly modest
‘The barbarians drive us to the sea, the sea drives us to the barbarians; between these two means of death…
Edison decried the electric recording as a mere ‘volume fad’
Listen closely, among the shelves of the last remaining music shops, in student dorm rooms and amid the flat whites…
Punk turns 40
There have been many punk exhibitions over the years so I can’t help but chuckle at the ‘experts’ who are…
Diary
Like many inward-looking children, I always doodled stories and poems. Knowing one wanted to be a writer is a different…
Black comedy
Fwoooosh! That, were someone to write a strip about it, would be the sound of a thousand comic books going…
Charting history
When you’re next waiting for a train at King’s Cross, don’t waste time window shopping on the concourse. Instead, pop…
Sins of omission
Georgians Revealed: Life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain at the British Library (until 11 March) would have you…
