Daisy Dunn
Train trouble
‘Every holiday of my childhood was spent either looking at art or making it. I remain helpless to resist the pull of the landscape on one side and lure of galleries on the other’
Hot for lunch
If there is an art to writing after three courses and wine, I never mastered it. But now that the long, boozy lunch is endangered, I’m having serious second thoughts
Stick to singles
‘If Pliny the Elder were alive today he’d be fronting Frack Off’
Jam tomorrow
“We do so love a literary rejection, provided it isn’t our own, of course.”
Little Britain
Miniature paintings suit the modern world — we live in a miniaturised world
Programmed poetry
“Every time I read of a new algorithm for producing a hit pop song, or software for writing a Man Booker-worthy novel, I know I’m in for a disappointment”
Minotaurs, Muses and modernity
Classical scholarship for love, not money, leads to some liberating interpretations
Deepdene: Rise and Fall of the House of Hope
The magnificent palazzo where Disraeli’s Young England group used to gather is long gone, but its grounds have now been restored
Maths For Girls
Talking about maths on aesthetic terms might make it more appealing to reluctant teens
Heaney’s Virgil Is Our Virgil
The posthumous publication of Aeneid VI is a katabasis for Heaney’s father
Tolerating the intolerant
“For those who thought that a global pandemic would sound the death knell for identity politics, think again”
How to prevent the next pandemic
‘I have been reporting as a science journalist for years that the world is at increasing risk of pandemics like this; that this was predicted; that we know what we need to do to prepare and we simply haven’t done it; and that more and worse pandemics are coming so we need to do that, now’
D’où parles-tu? The post-truth world
Power, illusion and the open society: how postmodernism undermines our foundational concepts