Ernest Hemingway
High life
The time-honoured saying that England’s great battles have been won on the playing fields of Eton is a lot of…
Low life
I like the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield, who according to Virginia Woolf smelt like a civet cat and had…
Old Harry’s game
Harry’s Bar is a dull pale box. This is remarkable in Venice, which is a hospice for dying palaces, held…
The stain of luxury
In Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen did a good job of showing how foolish it is to be obsessed by…
Elder statesman of the Republic of Letters
Even Spectator book reviewers have to concede that their craft is inferior to the creative travail of authors. Henry James…
The muse in the bottle
The boozer’s life is one of low self-esteem and squalid self-denial. It was memorably evoked by Charles Jackson in his…
High life
Porto Heli I am standing on the deck of a 100ft schooner that was built in Normandy in 1931 by…
