Sunday, 21 September 2014

Why couldn't her grandfather be waiting for us in a saner, less baroque place?

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How tall was this mountain anyway? Why couldn't her grandfather be waiting for us in a saner, less baroque place? H. Murakami, Hard bo...
Thursday, 7 August 2014

Travel, mountain-climbing, dabbling in occult rituals, and financing the publication of luxurious editions of his own poetry

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Of all the people who frequented the Chat Blanc, no one was more bizarre nor as interesting to Maugham as Aleister Crowley. An eccentric En...
Sunday, 13 July 2014

But for the invasion of steam, the Barbary corsairs might still be with us

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For a thousand years – from 830 to 1830 – from the days when the Amalfitans worn the proud title of “Defenders of the Faith” up to those of...

The state is the most precious of human possessions

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The state is the most precious of human possessions .. and no care can be too great to be spent on enabling it to do its work in the best wa...
Thursday, 12 June 2014

But my dear, nothing beats Vatican gossip

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... Steven Runciman, whom Paddy had met in Sofia in 1934 and who was now the British Council's Representative. Tall , fastidious and a ...
Thursday, 8 May 2014

Where else could a presenter get away with saying 'Can I move on to Burckhardt?'

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The first,  In  Our Time, has been described as 'the most cerebral 45 minutes on British radio'. In the course of just one series, ...
Wednesday, 7 May 2014

To be its Controller was like inheriting a long-established country estate

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[David Hatch] talked of Radio Four as 'the soul of the BBC', 'the last bastion' of the Reithian mission to inform, educate,...