American Literature
Bret Easton Ellis — the enfant terrible who finally grew up
How he at last lived up to his promise
Remembering an “effervescently affable man”
Kurt Vonnegut at 100
Medicalising art
Literature needs better friends
In arcadia ego
Finite life and Infinite Jest
Size isn’t necessarily substance
Gatsby aside, F. Scott Fitzgerald — the Jazz-Age chronicler — is dispensable
Bad bets by the Booker
In 2021, is the state of the Booker still “not serious stuff”?
Ripley returns
Rejoice, Ripley is back! But why are we so drawn to Patricia Highsmith’s anti-hero?
Do hurt people hurt people?
This popular cliché attempts to be generous but ends up implying that victims are tainted
Against rights radicalism
A noble cause has mutated into an obstructive and anti-democratic force
The Foreign Office should be rooted in the past
Who and what is it for, if not the British people, and our history and culture?
Death of the model railway?
Not so fast — this is one railway network Beeching can’t cut, and its built of life long fascination
Murders for April
April is the cruellest month, breeding detective fiction out of the dry land
What Britain should learn from Singaporean healthcare
How Singapore spends less and sees better outcomes
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar
The public health fanatics have a new enemy in their sights
The Midas touch
The kind of skill that makes the breath catch in thousands of throats at once
TransForming London
You deserve to be inclusioned in London’s progressive future
The building that inspired Orwell
Was there an appetite at the time for monumental buildings, equivalent to those in Moscow?
The joy of pets
Pet ownership is one of life’s simple pleasures, but it also lifts the soul
