Month: December 2024

From Conrad

To Diana Cooper, 23rd December 1945, Barhatch, Cranleigh, Surrey. And I got your letter about Maurice.* It was of deep interest to me. Especially as I can’t talk to Diana about him. Diana thinks writing poetry and being a Catholic (or having any religion) the two big unpardonable idiocies. So you can’t expect much sympathy… Continue reading From Conrad

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Categorised as Literature

On This Day

Conrad Russell, 1878 – 1947:  “Russell was the youngest of the six children of Lord Arthur Russell and Laura, the daughter of Paul Louis Jules, Vicomte de Peyronnet. He was accordingly a nephew of the Duke of Bedford, and a cousin of the philosopher Bertrand Russell, as well as of the latter’s son, his namesake… Continue reading On This Day

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Categorised as Literature

On A Clear Day

It’s grand to be in London on a cold, dry, sunny December day when the air is gin clear. There may be a bit of pollution but it’s invisible unlike the pea-soupers in Holmes’s London and World War Two.

The Nativity

The Via San Gregorio Armeno is a narrow alley in Naples full of shops selling nativity scenes. When I went some years ago I thought it all rather kitsch, verging on vulgar. I have changed my mind.

Mind the Gap

Recently I have been reticent about my dealings on the stock market because there haven’t been any. My last transaction was to top up my ISA in April.

Published
Categorised as Business

The Reason Why

Why did Roy Jenkins decide on another major biography in his old age. (It was published when he was eighty-two, the year before he died.) John Campbell explains.

Welsh Rabbit

Churchill was appointed Home Secretary in 1910. Aged thirty-five he was the youngest since Robert Peel.

A Night at the Opera

“The book which the reader has before him at this moment is, from one end to the other, in its entirety and details … a progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from corruption to life; from bestiality to duty, from… Continue reading A Night at the Opera

En Passant

You may pop into a church, if it’s not locked, to say a little prayer. I go in to look at architecture and monuments; always to a greater or lesser extent rewarding and I can say a little prayer when I get home.

Tarsila

Paris in the 1920s was a crucible in the heat of which Cubism, Futurism, and Expressionism were forged by artists like André Lhote, Fernand Léger, and Albert Gleizes. There was a woman in another country and another continent who wanted to learn about these new styles.