This post was written as an article for the journal Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 258:2...
Reflections
Veganism and Modernism
This post was written for the Vegan Society Researcher Network blog, where it may be found here. It appears...
Response to Dominic Cummings on the subject of Oxbridge English graduates
The following is the full text of a letter published in edited form by The Evening Standard on 6th...
White Angels: the Perversion of Good Impulses to Negative Ends
Epigraph: 'Since those years it has often been said by pacifists - as in a brave, lop-sided pamphlet which I...
Literary Bad Sex
The following article was commissioned by IAI (Institute of Arts and Ideas), and published March 15th 2019; the...
On going vegan
The following was written as an open letter to be read out to an initial meeting of the 'Vegan Info and Social...
Ambiguous Words
I have decided to start a series of Tweets containing glosses on (to me) interestingly ambiguous words (mainly...
Athens Diary 2018
Over the last three months I have visited Athens three times. This is my retrospective diary of life and death....
World War II and Memory
This article was commissioned by the Institute of Arts and Ideas for their website IAI News. An edited and shortened...
‘And What Did You Do in the War, Vati?’ My German Family’s Second World War
In my post Reflections on the Death of an Aunt I mentioned an incident in which my aunt was nearly raped by an...
Reflections on the Death of an Aunt
This morning my aunt died. This may only be of interest to those who knew her, but I would nonetheless...
In Memoriam Derek Walcott Part I: A Reminiscence of Meeting Him in 2001
It was 2001 and I was as footloose as I have ever been. Footlooser than I ever want to be again. I threw...
Lipstick on Your Collar: My Fascination for the Nineteen-Fifties
There are, I find, many advantages to being born relatively late for your generation. Your parents know pretty...
Anglo-Greek Arcadia and Me
The following article was published in the June 2017 issue of Standpoint magazine, and it may be read here. My...
Whistlejacket Forever
It’s called a levade, when horses rear in art. He’s an Arab, so it fits - from the land of rising suns....
Moscow: History of a Symbol
Russia doesn’t do towns. There are no Russian Granthams, Great Yarmouths, or Leighton Buzzards. Its...
Uncustomisable Orthodoxy
This summer I attended my first Orthodox funeral – in St Sophia’s Church, Moscow Road, Bayswater,...
Corfus of the Mind
Sources in order of recency: Conversation with my mother-in-law Alexia Mercouris née Stephanides...
Of Man and Dogs
I have recently read In Defence of Dogs (Penguin 2012, 324 pp.) by John Bradshaw, biologist and...
BBC 1 Lady Chatterley’s Lover
I was script consultant to Jed Mercurio in his adaptation for Lady Chatterley's Lover - 90 minutes aired on BBC1 on...
Some Things That Are True of My Dad
Both of my parents are saints, basically. But beyond that, they have their particularities. Especially my Dad....
On Being at Home on Easter Morning
Church-going time, Easter morning, 2016. I am at home, looking at a vase of daffodils and a giant...
Two Ways of Seeing Things
Maya Plisetskaya in the 1974 Russian Anna Karenina ‘Видите ли, на одну и ту же вещь можно смотреть трагически и...
Opportunity Missed at Tottenham Court Road Station; Capitalist Sublime at Centre Point
Like hundreds of other people, I spent 2015 as a Tottenham Court Road Station refugee. From January to...
Marriage a la Mode
This article was published by the December 2015 edition of Standpoint magazine here. What follows is a pre-edited...
Ten Things that I have Learned about Dog-Owning – and Listicles
Listicles resemble and are rightly mocked by their name – diminutive, patterned, noticeably lacking conceptual...
Cambridge Revisited
It’s a whole genre of experience, revisiting your university town after a gap of years. Last weekend I...
Reader, I married him
This article is a pre-edited version of an article published here in the October 2015 edition of Literary Review....
Whataboutism in the Gulag
A couple of Sundays ago I was in the Gulag. Or, to be accurate, in a memorial on the site of a former...
Broadside Against Ageism
“My parting advice to graduates? Beware ageism. It’ll be starting right around now. The feeling...
The Saracen’s Head at Southwell
Recently my family and I visited Southwell. This pleasant North Nottinghamshire Cathedral town, stabilised into...
On Friendship
As today is the name’s day of a friend, I am reflecting on friendship. Friend is often betrayed when...
Helen Bamber
Helen Bamber died two days ago. She was a founder member of Amnesty International, co-founder of The Medical...
Deconstructing Russophobia
Imagine that Vladimir Putin were not a murderous autocrat and kleptocrat who has spent his fourteen years in power...
Summits and Lovers: Retracing the Footsteps of DH Lawrence in the Alps
This Financial Times article describes my experience of filming 'Journey without Shame', a BBC2 Culture...