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Category Archives: feature

Trouble at t’Mill

The curious life of John Stuart Mill, philosopher . When JS Mill was born, his father, James, challenged a friend to ‘race with you in the education of… the most accomplished and virtuous young man.’ That other child has not gone down in history – but he may well have dodged a serious bullet. Learning […]

An Oxford squaddie

From deer park to gun park… . Sixteen years ago, American and British forces hurled themselves into Afghanistan the same week I arrived at Magdalen College, Oxford. I didn’t give them much thought – although the ‘War on Terror’ was immediately everywhere. I had an Egyptology degree to get to grips with; and choral evensong […]

Blessed are the speechmakers?

A back-handed tribute to President William Henry Harrison. — For The Spectator

St Paul’s (Knightsbridge) and the Great War

A blog piece for Culture House on the Royal Naval mobilisation of the Rev Wilfrid Hannay Gibbins, and the parish mags of a church in West London over the course of the First World War. — For The Spectator

Good show(?)! – Mozart Undone

His circus-like extravaganzas have sliced and diced The Beatles, played fast and loose with Bob Dylan, and spawned successful imitations across the theatre scene in his native Denmark. Now the gleefully wilful director-cum-ringmaster Nikolaj Cederholm brings his trademark ‘theatre concert’ to London’s Barbican, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s temporary residence in the British […]

Peace-dance!

A disquisition on the balletic arts at the Rugby World Cup 2011. — For theartsdesk

With friends like these…

An exclusive from Rana Dasgupta, master of tanbur-related micro-non-fiction. — For theartsdesk

Drowning in a tsunami of cliché?

The Gratiaen Prize 2009 The Gratiaen Prize – for those of you not up on your South Asian literary gongs – is an annual award given to Sri Lankan writers for creative writing in English, f(o)unded in 1993 by Michael Ondaatje, with his English Patient Booker winnings. Writing-in-English is a small crowd here – ‘here’ […]

So far, So-malia*

Somali Islamists go to war – against each other. For The First Post. — * no, that line didn’t make the edit.

The Devil is in the DJs

Crazies ban music in Mogadishu (and the Somali ‘government’ attempts to ban the ban). For The First Post.