Posters
How the railways shaped modern culture
Cue track seven of Frank Sinatra’s 1957 album Only the Lonely and you can hear Ol’ Blue Eyes pretending to…
The mesmerising Olympic posters designed by the likes of Warhol and Whiteread
You could be forgiven for assuming that the citizens of Paris weren’t exactly bursting with joy at the prospect of…
Grubby thumb prints and peeling glue
Among the spoils of a lockdown clear-out was a box of my grandmother’s books: Woolf, Austen, Mitford and The Complete…
Lautrec often made the stars in his posters look appalling – but they kept coming back
You don’t need to be much of a psychologist to understand the trajectory of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Born to aristocratic…
The forgotten history of the Tube’s ‘poster girls’
Every weekday, I travel by Tube to The Spectator’s office, staring at the posters plastered all over the walls. I…
The art of persuasion
It’s hard to admire communist art with an entirely clear conscience. The centenary of the October revolution, which falls this…
Letters
Italy’s to-do list Sir: You would expect a long letter of rebuttal by a piqued senior diplomat in response to…
Why are kids making posters for their GCSEs?
My niece, Lara, 15, has a mind like a surgical blade. On any subject, from calculus to The X Factor,…
