Edgar Allan Poe’s downward trajectory By Frances Wilson
The subversive sexuality of the literary vampire By A. K. Blakemore
The modern cult of Vermeer By James Hall
Reflections on writing, addiction and Monet’s water lilies By Marie Darrieussecq
Anne Carson’s juggling act By Tristram Fane Saunders
The story of gardens and their cultural significance By David E. Cooper
Buried dreams of a small-town prodigy By Beejay Silcox
A flawed but brilliant poet ‘dealt a cruel hand by fate’ By Gabriel Josipovici
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘Albert Camus – The Notebooks’…
The trials of a public intellectual By Patrick McGuinness
“Sadness of success”, writes Albert Camus in a notebook entry for June 25, 1947: “If everything were more difficult for me, as before, I’d have much more right to say what I say”. The success in question was winning the Prix des Critiques for La Peste (The Plague), published a fortnight earlier. It could be worse, the reader wants to tell him by way of consolation: you could have won the Nobel. Fast-forward ten years and the entry for October 17, 1957, reads: “Nobel. Strange feeling of overwhelming weight and melancholy. At 20 years old, poor and naked, I knew true glory. My mother”.
China Miéville’s anti-colonialist vision By Anna Aslanyan
A romantic novelist who became a figure of fun By Nicola Shulman
How writing freed Anita Brookner from despair By Elizabeth Lowry
In 1638 the king’s jester asked an archbishop, “Who’s fool now?” and was thrown out of court the same day. The fool’s license to mock has changed hands ever since. It has rarely been the fool’s to keep.
Why we’re pointing you there
Archibald Armstrong had jested for two kings when he mocked Archbishop Laud over the Scottish prayer-book revolt. The Privy Council sentenced him to have his coat pulled over his head and be banished the court. Michael Cummins starts there and asks who has held the fool’s license since kings stopped keeping fools. He follows it through Shakespeare’s “allowed fool,” a caricaturist on a party pension, and a Victor Hugo play banned after a single night. Then a British cabinet minister takes a cartoonist to lunch, and in January 2025 a Pulitzer Prize winner walks out of the Washington Post.
What we liked most is the centerpiece. In 1937 Goebbels complained about David Low’s cartoons, and Lord Halifax carried the complaint home. The newspaper said it couldn’t control Low, so the minister had to ask the cartoonist himself. Low agreed to ease off, and answered with a new character whose name was a pun on what had just happened to him. The essay grants that the cost of losing the license has fallen a long way since Armstrong’s day. It ends by asking whether a paying public is a freer master than a king, or only a larger court.
Read the full essay at Intellicurean →
Essays & Reviews for the Intellectually Curious
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘Samuel Beckett’s diaries of Nazi Germany…
Correcting the reductive myths around Sylvia Plath By Heather Clark
Beckett’s ‘German Journey’ in the Nazi period By Durs Grünbein
The doomed premiership of Rishi Sunak By Alex Dean
How to distinguish morality from convention By Simone Gubler
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘Philip Zelikow and Anchit Sathi on progress, AI and the death of the author…..
When doctors and families fall out over medical intervention By Charles Foster
Looking at John Berger By Margaret Drabble
Can literary culture survive in the era of machine intelligence? By Anchit Sathi
Why nations win or lose the technological race By Philip Zelikow
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘Fighting Over King Arthur’ – Marion Turner on a legend’s global appeal.
The versatility of Arthur and his legends By Marion Turner
Nigerian scammers and their targets By Sally Hayden
How William Empson viewed Virginia Woolf’s diaries By Mark Thompson
Frida Kahlo, iconized: ‘I would not like to become famous’ By Miranda France
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features…
What happened when the Romans left By Michael Wood
The case for and against realism in US foreign policy By Sam Freedman
The song remains: Christopher Nolan’s version of Homer By A. E. Stallings
A flâneur’s journey through Paris and the self By Michael Caines
The enduring influence of the classical epics By Peter McDonald
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘Emily Brontë’s mysterious power’….
Oxbridge in the postwar world By Richard Vinen
The awesome, mysterious work of Emily Brontë By Claire Harman
Silence in literature By Daniel Karlin
Should human life have a purpose? By Crispin Sartwell
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features Allen Ginsberg at 100; Shere Hite and the female pleasure principle; Shakespeare’s politics…
The Iranian regime’s long confrontation with America By Azadeh Moaveni
Poet, counterculture critic and self-promoter By Douglas Field
Do objects exist independently of human experience? By Emily Herring
How Shere Hite put women’s pleasure first By Angela Saini
