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Tag Archives: WWI

Crimean punishment

Attempting – unsuccessfully – to get my head round the roots of the Ukraine war, via Orlando Figes’ magisterial Crimea. — For Perspective

A Hitch in time

On the late, great Christopher Hitchens, and the role the Falklands may have played in his political development. — For The Critic

Hat trick ball

My mate Howard has found a cricket ball in his aunt’s attic… — For The Critic

A biographical note on Duncan Grant (apropos one of those Facebook challenges that do the rounds occasionally)

A weapons-grade Bloomsburyist, Duncan Grant (1885-1978) spent much of his early childhood in India (natch), where his grandfather had been Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. He ‘became interested in Japanese prints’ while still at prep school. After attending St Paul’s, Westminster School of Art and the Slade School – interspersed with stints in Italy and France, of […]

All good things must come to an end

Some Trick: thirteen stories by Helen DeWitt New Directions, £22.95, pp.197 Certain American States by Catherine Lacey Granta, £12.99, pp.190 Hostages by Oisín Fagan Head of Zeus, £8.99, pp.269 Notes from the Fog by Ben Marcus Granta, £12.99, pp.266 The Abyss and Other Stories by Leonid Andreyev Alma Books, £8.99, pp.315 . Only Helen DeWitt […]

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