Ezekiel's vision The True Gods Attend You Clarence Caddell, Bonfire Books, 2022, 71 pages, £11.80 MICHAEL YOST finds a collection of original religiously-inspired verse rather forced There are two major traditions pertinent to verse literature that are seldom engaged in, but for all that are the more interesting when an artist does make use of…
Photo: Ben Kirby. Courtesy of Pexels Whatever Happened To Tradition? History, Belonging and the Future of the West Tim Stanley, Bloomsbury Continuum, October 2021, 272 pages, £20 KEN BELL finds that banished traditions can come back in new ways The central theme of Tim Stanley’s Whatever Happened to Tradition is that tradition in the West…
Harold Bloom STODDARD MARTIN remembers a dedicated litterateur’s late works One can hardly think but with affection of Harold Bloom, addict of the Word, historic lover of literature, and coiner of the phrase “anxiety of influence” among other more recondite tags. It would be invidious not to feel that affection when considering his final books,…
The story so far (Chapters 2-8 inclusive have all previously been published on this site, starting here). The complete poem has just been published as A Man of Heart, by Shearsman. Mid 5th century Britain. After the legions have withdrawn, the island is facing civil war, a growing number of external enemies and a steady tide of pagan…
KMSKA: The Finest Museum The Holy Family by Rubens. KMSKA Patrick De Rynck (ed.), KMSKA, 2022, hardback, 256pp, fully illus., €45 KMSKA: The Finest Hundred Patrick De Rynck (ed.),KMSKA,2022, hardback, 288pp, fully illus., €45 Bruegel and Beyond: Netherlandish Drawings in the Royal Library of Belgium, 1500-1800 Daan van Heesch, Sarah Van Ooteghem, Joris Van Grieken…
Corpse of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico The Last Emperor of Mexico: A Disaster in the New World Edward Shawcross, Faber & Faber, January 2022, 336 pages, £20 KEN BELL reflects on a Mexico that might have been Mexico has only ever had one ruler who cared about the Indians and he was shot by order…
Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 Max Hastings, William Collins, September 2022, 576 pages, £30 KEN BELL recalls the Cold War’s most dangerous moment 2022 has been the sixtieth anniversary year of the Cuban Missile Crisis so a lot has been written about the event, with Max Hastings’ Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 being…
STUART MILLSON enjoys some neglected gems of British music Why does the spiritual toll of the Great War seem to have been harsher for Britain than for any of the other European combatants, asks organist, scholar, music-writer Robert James Stove, in commentary for a booklet which accompanies a new CD on the Australian Ars Organi…
Wilko Johnson CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD remembers the first time he met Dr. Feelgood’s ace guitarist It’s a strange thing about biography. No matter how many facts are told, how many details are given or lists are made, the essential thing all too often resists telling. To say that so and so was born here, that he…
An American in Paris STUART MILLSON is transported to a warmer sound-world Any sense of malaise, austerity or winter gloom in London was dispelled for two hours (for those fortunate to be in attendance) by the Sinfonia of London’s 2nd December performance of Walton, Ravel, Dutilleux and Gershwin at the Barbican. Much praised by the…