January 2019
Into the Adorno-Verse

Is there any way to intervene usefully or meaningfully in public debate, in what the extremely online Twitter users are with gleeful irony calling the ‘discourse’ of the present moment?
Read MoreTowards Right and Left 2.0?

The political ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ are going through significant transformations. Both wings are becoming more polarised and radical...
Read MoreOn Summers in Switzerland and Sheffield

In late summer and early autumn of 1765, Rousseau was on the run. He was always fleeing some sort of persecution: at times very real, and legal; at others perhaps more perceived, and highly personal.
Read More‘There’s some unattractive social snobbery in their suggestion’

Middle-class families protest at their exclusion from grammar schools.” Not your usual headline, but news nonetheless of a petition signed by thousands of parents objecting...
Read More‘A novel of mine lurking a mere foot above the head of the vice-president of the United States?’

During the flurry of George H.W. Bush’s death, funeral and canonisation, it was impossible to escape the photograph of George and Barbara Bush at their house in Maine...
Read MoreColin Raff: Torpid Slivers #25-29

Even the best of us, in our tender years, were at some moments cruel to other children. But did you also instruct those you bullied to transform...
Read MoreNo absinthe, Chartreuse could cure you…

Let me tell you about a color that began as a fabled drink. It tasted harsh and punishing, like medicine. It began as a mythic elixir...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
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