Ed Simon: An Appointment with Father Grandier

One spring day in 1629, legions of devils came to call upon Father Urbain Grandier. If we’re to believe his accusers, the priest respond with enthusiasm at the arrival of his demonic charge.

The Siege of Cádiz: Napoleon’s fatal knot

‘Paradoxically, Churchill’s fight to save the Empire led to its loss’

Misunderstanding of the “true” plague advocates

‘There are a number of reasons that a perfect (or even near perfect) dictionary is an impossibility…’

Re-reading Said’s ‘Orientalism’

Will Self’s 2010 Sebald Lecture

Listen to Will Self’s full Sebald lecture

‘…the reporter’s job is no longer about the breathless conveyance of such facts à la Russell’

Battling ALS, Tony Judt continues to share his new thoughts on social democracy

(Video: ‘What is Living and What is Dead in Social Democracy’)

Interview with the “last handwriter” to come soon?

Geostrategic appreciation: a winning attribute in the American Civil War

Planning the (Soviet) invasion of Afghanistan

‘The history of Soviet Islam in Central Asia was different…’

Melissa Broder’s Latest 32 Tweets

almost ready to be ok but not yet

The memories are like stutters. Sometimes I inhale for air, and exhale a shaking chain of memories. A choking hazard. I for the ghost. The ghost for me.

D. Joyce-Ahearne on Federico García Lorca

D. Joyce-Ahearne

If duende, the source of inspiration that Lorca sets out to champion in his essay at the expense of the Muse, is “in sum, the spirit of the earth”, a force linking body and soil through a struggle akin to death, then the Muse is a force that speaks to the head and inspires art that is, in the words’ most negative senses, cerebral and high-minded.

‘We Like Philosophers And Live Like Fools.’ by Shane Jesse Christmass

Burton was born in Kentucky. He moved itinerantly before settling in Oakland. Temperatures rise, so does the suicide rate.

Jenny Diski is not cheery or brave or serene at the moment…

Jenny Diski

I’ve been writing a more or less monthly memoir of my life in the sixties and seventies when I lived with Doris Lessing, and my continuing relationship with her until her death last year at 94. It is also an ongoing portrait of my incurable cancer.

From seat 8A, clouds mountainous, I’m considering flat-earthers.

The cars came scudding in towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets in the groove of the Naas Road. At the crest of the hill at Inchicore sightseers...