An asthma crisis prevented me from going out and measuring directly in the streets the level of national enthusiasm or indignation. I wasn’t around any of the innumerable street parties…
The other day I fell prey to a dreadful thought: the more the 21st century moves forward, the less people there will be who’ve known the world without internet and…
Dear Anna and Phoebe, A few weeks ago, a friend and I went to the National Gallery in London to see a picture. Only the one, very specific, about which…
Delirium I’m sitting at The Whittington Stone pub in north London, watching the funeral procession of Queen Elizabeth II after the religious service at Westminster’s Abbey. The cortege has just…
From the day before I went on holiday this summer, I didn’t want to watch the news. I had the firm resolve to disconnect from any source of stress and…
Up to some eight thousand years ago, Great Britain was still joined to that which would become an expression of its strangeness once it became an island: the continent. I…
Nothing like the threat of an all-inclusive third world war (i.e., with nuclear weapons) to make a deadly and devastating pandemic seem almost insignificant. The human mind is odd. Its…
Pendant que les fonds publics s’ecoulent en fêtes de fraternité, il sonne une cloche de feu rose dans les nuages. Arthur Rimbaud Last year I applied for a grant…
Some weeks ago, just before the omicron wave made us the gift of this pitiful déjà vu sensation as we approached the festive season, leaving us futilely trying to pluck…
for Amanda and Nick A couple of weeks after publishing in these space the second part of my reflections—my disenchantment, my sense of suffocation, my rage even—about the sorrowful state…
Part Two In part one of these reflections, I discussed some of the most obvious evils that undermine literary creation nowadays: the urge to turn authors into pawns of celebrity…