Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
Having a Reputation
A new biography of James Bryce, one time Chief Secretary of Ireland and supporter of Irish Home Rule, reveals the astonishingly varied and accomplished life of a long forgotten ‘greatest living Englishman’. This is an outstanding work of intellectual history,…
A Cosmopolitan Poet
Katrina Goldstone pays tribute to her much missed friend and mentor, the poet and scholar Gerald Dawe (1952-2024). By reflecting on his distinctive cosmopolitan sensibility, what his wife, Dorothea Melvin, dubbed ‘his European soul’, we get a surer grasp of…
Palestinians and Other Strangers
Two new studies of the plight of Palestinians and other strangers offer a glimpse of how we might hold on to solidarity as strategy and human principle. Dolefully or otherwise, writes Lori Allen, we have all been looking through our…
Poetry and Politics
Poets, more than any other kind of writers or artists, are called upon to defend their impulses and pretensions. This is particularly true in times in political crisis which we are living through right now.
Unholy Thoughts
A skillful excavation of the ‘Presbyterian archive’ has produced a surprising and captivating history of Presbyterian life in eighteenth century Ulster, a veritable Bridgerton on the Bann. Drawing on a rich variety of contemporary records including letters, diaries, newspapers and…
Nocturne
A new poem from Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
When is bullshit real bullshit?
It may be comforting to assert that one’s political enemies are bullshitters but one can’t help wondering whether this assertion is itself a piece of bullshit.
Whither Gay Rights?
If there was nothing inevitable about the expansion of liberty for lesbians and gay men and today nothing inevitable about the future maintenance of that liberty, what should be the strategy of the lesbian and gay rights movement?
Rereadings 1 – ‘On The Closing of the American Mind’
Welcome to a new series called ‘Rereadings’ in which writers are invited to consider a notable work of their own or of another author. Our first instalment features the reflections of Richard Kraut on Allan Bloom’s ‘The Closing of the…
Get Carter
Likening the editor’s role to that of a choirmaster seeking harmony from ‘all these disparate voices’, Graydon Carter courted a younger, brighter and more distinctive breed of writer. It worked. The new style sold.
Ligatured to Contraction
Irish Catholicism: its Rise, Fall and (possible) Revival. Brief thoughts on a large question
Virginia Woolf’s juvenilia
‘The Life of Violet’ brings together three interconnected short stories, written by Virginia Woolf at 25, that reveal her beginning to think about something she would return to throughout her career: how to tell the story of a woman’s life.