Wolves have returned to the neighbourhood in which I have my house in France. It borders the département in which the so called Beast of Gévaudun, presumably a wolf, a pair or a pack of wolves, terrified the population in the middle years of the eighteenth century, killing perhaps a hundred people. Three miles from my house, local people have … [Read on]
This article is in the current edition of the Salisbury Review out now I don’t suppose that there were many in the country who managed entirely to avoid talking about Brexit. The debate was simultaneously important and dull, in that respect rather like Mrs May. Passion in discussion was not necessarily proportional to knowledge, and many people gave up talking … [Read on]
Once when I was driving in Port Harcourt in Nigeria with my friend, Ken Saro-Wiwa (the writer who was later hanged by a military regime), we heard over the car radio an appeal for the owner of the naked man’s body on the side of one the main roads to come and collect it. A few minutes later we drove … [Read on]
There was a time in my life, many years ago, when people were not expected to boast about their accomplishments: indeed, they were expected not to boast about their accomplishments. Self-praise was regarded as no praise; indeed, someone who praised himself was thought to be a bad character. These days, however, boasting and the expression of self-satisfaction are essential to … [Read on]
Modernist architecture is inherently totalitarian: it brooks no other, and indeed delights to overwhelm and humiliate what went before it by size and prepotency, or by garishness and the preposterousness which it takes for originality, and which turns every townscape into the architectural equivalent of a Mickey Finn. In the Guardian newspaper last week, its architectural correspondent wrote an … [Read on]
A friend of mine, of a profession different from my own, received a letter the other day from his professional licensing authority – that is to say, the authority without whose approval and permission he cannot practise at all. ‘Dear Colleague’ the letter began, all nice, friendly and collegial. By its end, however, it had turned nasty and threatening. It … [Read on]
In the second section of the Guardian for 16 January, there is an article about a building in Peru that has ‘just earned… the title of best new building in the world.’ As the awarding body was the Royal Institute of British Architects, it was only to be expected that the building was a complete aesthetic mess, an eyesore: for … [Read on]
The circuses division of our bread-and-circuses regime is certainly in rude health. Opinions vary as to the health of the bread division off that regime: one can find everything from predictions of imminent collapse to those of vigorous growth and expansion. For myself, I find myself unable to decide whether economists belong more to the world of bread than they … [Read on]
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