I met him when I was eleven or twelve, because one of his sons was in my class. He arrived in a Rolls Royce, talked affably in the...

I was amused and a little disturbed recently to stumble upon both a couple of life expectancy calculators (here's one) and a page on the...

I'm having a pretty hard time handling the election results this morning. As I write, Biden may still narrowly win, but the vote mainly...

Language matters; three words that matter more than most right now - because our politicians are encouraging us to get it all wrong about...

Not being of the Fascism-Curious Party, I will vote for Joe Biden in the Fall. Being sufficiently revolted by the FCP that I have...

Above: Edgar Degas and Jacques Louis David with competing erotic visions of the Spartans. Or Lacedaemonians. Rooting about in Thucydides,...

Recently I was sent an opinion-piece written by the comedian Tim Allen; it defends (or anyway announces) a list of "conservative"...

I'm back in Seattle after a four-day adventure in my trusty kayak, circumnavigating Decatur, Lopez, and Shaw Islands in the San Juans....

Doing some research on iconic speeches in times of crisis, I am struck by the common thread: all of them - Lincoln's Second Inaugural,...

As Orwell almost said, Little DoubleThinker Is Scamming You. This morning The New York Times treated us to a piece by one of their...

A lot of people are being tested for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. (Not enough in my neck of the planet, thanks to our...

For three years now, an oily moral poison has been leaking from the wrecked hull of that stately grand dame of the democratic oceans, the...

“Every morning I tell myself, Today has to be productive—and then something happens that prevents me from writing. Today . . . what is...

One of the most luminous, most humane intelligences in history was born two hundred years ago today: But the effect of her being on those...

Why is English so much simpler in grammar and richer in vocabulary than so many other languages? (Why does the OED need twenty volumes?)...

Apparently the new season of The Crown will take us into the 1960s and actor David Wilmott will play union leader Arthur Scargill. This...

Discovered recently among the manuscripts of that great English dramatist Willie A. Peakshamers: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...

Today the Guardian – or Grauniad, as we lovers of its many typos call it – recommends the lovely Devon village of Tavistock as “not...

The highest point in the Brecon Beacons, and Wales, and southern Britain. It was supposed to be raining. The wind was ferocious, but we...