Eric Ormsby
From Jesus Sect to Imperial Faith
Two new works by Geza Vermes and Peter Brown eloquently and enthusiastically chart the progress of Christianity from Jesus Christ to the height of the Byzantine empire
Clutching at Straws and Tilting at Minarets
Two new books on the origins of Islam suffer from, at best, sloppy, and at worst, dishonest, scholarship
A Wee Dram of History
Review of new poetry from Carol Ann Duffy, Derwent May, W.G. Sebald and Tomas Tranströmer
The Erotic Inferno
Book review of Dante in Love by A.N. Wilson
Underrated — Alfred Lord Tennyson
This Victorian versifier has always been an acquired taste, even to his contemporaries. But today, his prolific output is barely read at all — and we are poorer for it
Overrated — Paul Muldoon
Acclaimed poet Paul Muldoon may be a dazzling wordsmith, but his verse is all style and no substance
Rhyming Triplets
Book Reviews: New & Collected Poems, by U. A. Fanthorpe; How Snow Falls, by Craig Raine; and Late Poems, by Anthony Thwaite
Geoffrey Hill
The “unabashedly elitist” elegist of England is an ideal candidate for the Oxford Professorship of Poetry
The Poetical Mollusc
True Friendship: Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht, and Robert Lowell under the Sign of Eliot and Pound by Christopher Ricks
Holier than Thou
A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch and A New History of Early Christianity by Charles Freeman
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