It’s important not to be too immediately dismissive of poor Craig Raine. Book reviewers and editors like him, who invent rigid literary principles and then dismiss anything that fails to embody them, have been on the decline since the 1970s. It’s true that one would probably sooner go for guidance to a generous reader who
Marianne Moore’s poems are notoriously ‘difficult’ but her personality and the circumstances of her life are as fascinating today as they were to the avant-garde writers and artists of 1920s New York. Much of the fascination lies in the contrast between what Linda Leavell calls Moore’s ‘maiden-aunt persona’ and her position as a ground-breaking modernist,
The New Yorker has always had a peculiar affinity with cats, perhaps because they have a lot in common — an elegance, an abhorrence of sentimentality and an innate sense of superiority. The Big New Yorker Book of Cats is full of cats and owners, each holding one another at arm’s length and peering through
Good news for the festive season — the inexorable rise of the virtual image on our computer screens, tablets, and mobile phones would appear to have done nothing to diminish the flood of gorgeously produced art books being published. This year’s selection ranges in time from the third century AD to now, and reaches all
‘Nothing’s funny any more’ has become the daily mantra of this magazine’s cartoon editor, Michael Heath. Thanks to Leveson, political correctness, taste and common decency, lampooning public figures in particular has become more difficult than ever. Hugo Rifkind still has the right idea. From the despair of trying to conjure up a column for the
The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a story for the older reader. One might go so far as to suggest that local authorities should give ‘seniors’ a copy free with their euphemistically named ‘Freedom Pass’ as a reminder of the longest journey they will ever take. Boris’s memento mori. Perversely, because it is short and
Many of us, I get the feeling, don’t go and see as many films as we used to, or want to. Instead we spend all our time complaining that we don’t have enough time to watch films any more. Speaking purely as a hard-working freelance, I also miss all those old black-and-white movies BBC2 used
In Cooking People Sophia Waugh describes, with dash and wit, the personalities of five important women cookery writers: two Hannahs (Woolley from the 17th century and Glasse from the 18th), Eliza Acton and Isabella Beeton from the 19th, and Elizabeth David from the 20th. And she illustrates their merits with recipes for the home cook
Historians still argue over whether the regime of the GDR can be called a totalitarian one. Some say that the definition reduces the difference between the Socialist Unity Party and National Socialism —that the Nazis left millions dead while the SED left millions of Stasi files. It’s a loaded question, and one that will occur
