Nigel Jones is a historian and journalist
The reviewer of Alain de Botton’s books runs a grave risk. For behold what happened to the New York Times critic Caleb Crain in 2009 when he suggested that AdB’s 2009 book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work ‘succeeds as entertainment, if not as analysis’. The philosopher replied: ‘I will hate you till the day
Vernon Scannell, a poet who fought in North Africa in the Second World War, observed in his poem ‘The Great War’: ‘Whenever the November sky Quivers with a bugle’s hoarse, sweet cry The reason darkens; in its evening gleam Crosses and flares, tormented wire, grey earth Spattered with crimson flowers, And I remember, Not the
We so enjoyed Nigel Jones’s last contribution to Coffee House that we thought we’d invite him back to describe the rather eccentric Bonfire Night celebrations in Lewes… Here in Lewes near the Sussex coast we were awoken this morning at 6am by a flash in the sky followed by an ear-splitting explosion. The shock waves
Athens, for all its current woes, still has the Parthenon. Rome has the Colosseum, Paris the Louvre, Berlin the Reichstag, Beijing the forbidden city, Moscow the Kremlin and Washington the White House. But where in London is there a structure that sums up and encapsulates the sweep of English History from 1066 and all that,