Simon Scott Plummer
Quixotic Quest Across Spain
The dust-jacket of Christopher Howse’s second book on Spain points to its contents. In the province of Huesca a tiny caterpillar of a train is passing beneath the Cyclopean sugar-loaf rocks of Riglos, a magnet to climbers and home to the griffon vulture. This, then, is not a book about Spanish railways. Rather, the network serves simply as structure for a much wider survey of the country’s past and present.
The Middle Kingdom’s Problem with Religion
Faced with an astonishing revival of Christianity in China, Beijing is reacting with a mixture of alarm, repression and control
Faded Glory: In The Footsteps of Old Fritz
In 1757, Prussia under Frederick the Great celebrated its most famous victories in the Seven Years’ War. The two battlefields at Leuthen and Rossbach are still worth seeing today
In the Steps of the Spanish
Book reviews of Love: A Secret History by Simon May and All About Love by Lisa Appignanesi
Well Worth an Arm and a Leg
Book review of Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe by Charles Freeman and Walsingham: Pilgrims and Pilgrimage by Michael Rear
Melancholy Monuments of Chivalry
From Cyprus and Anatolia to Rhodes, the Levant’s castles bear witness to the struggle for supremacy between East and West
Park and Ride
The Olympic juggernaut has trampled over any local council objections to its project. Now it looks like it will do the same to Greenwich Park
Castles of the Imagination
From Wales to Syria, fortresses are monuments to an age of chivalry — but some are only castles in the air
From Treblinka to Tannenberg
A tour through Eastern Poland uncovers the wreckage of German military might
Will the green agenda be killed off by the pandemic?
‘Will the green agenda be killed off by the longer-term coronavirus recovery? Or might the closure of so much business, and the cleaner air that results from planes not flying and factories not working, give us extra years to gain control of our environment?’
Why T.S. Eliot still matters
His contemporaries’ reputations have diminished. But Eliot’s has grown: he is the poet who shows us what can be saved from the ruins
Music’s in the house
Rappers have found a role in lockdown: chronicling coronavirus with topical tunes. Most people, though, are rushing to the safety of the past