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
How Top Boys topple down crime’s ladder
Too many prisoners rejoin society with no education, stable housing or job prospects. No surprise that more than half reoffend within a year
In the bleak midwinter
Christmas can be a bleak time of year. While some feel isolated, others are overwhelmed by the need for a perfect family Yuletide when their reality is different
My warnings to our spy watchdogs
Britain is under attack from Russia. And the government is blocking a Parliamentary report that details it