Thomas Hardy
The pen and the plant
A sumptuous coffee-table book in which writers from Henry James to Frances Hodgson Burnett are briefly glimpsed while passing through the beautiful spaces that outlast them
Low life
I thought, or anyway hoped, that once I’d finished the chemotherapy I would spring back to vitality. Seven weeks on…
Low Life
Harley Granville-Barker, actor, director, playwright, manager and critic, was a pasha of the Edwardian London stage. As a director, his…
Our old Macca
The Paul people are out in force these days. A New Yorker profile, a book and a new documentary have…
Wishful drinking
Pubs have always been good at bending the rules
Diary
Staying in Britain for the summer has been, in many ways, entirely glorious. We have zigzagged from Shropshire through Derbyshire…
Up close and personal with Thomas Hardy
I walked in out of the rain, dripping, and sat down beside the fire on the primitive high-backed settle. ‘Is…
Low life
On Saturday night, I toddled up to the village hall for the fish-and-chip supper, quiz night and raffle — bring…
… and sense and sensibility
Book reviews, John Updike once wrote, ‘perform a clear and desired social service: they excuse us from reading the books…
Wild life
Nairobi Nairobi’s old avenues were designed to be wide enough for a wagon and several span of oxen to U-turn…
Larkin’s misty parks and moors — in all their lacerating beauty
When Philip Larkin went up to St John’s College, Oxford, in the early 1940s, he found himself in a world…
A secluded paradise
Do-orzaat. Dorset is part of L’Angleterre profonde. It is possible to find evidence of modernity, but only in limited areas.…
Crowd pleaser
Firstly, a message to all Marvel fanboys: there is nothing for you here. Nothing. No CGI, no endless battles, no…
Hand over fist
And so, in the end, I went with my sister, Toni, to see Fifty Shades of Grey and we saw…
