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On the road
“In the summer of 1980, in the grip of some Kerouac-ish fantasy, I opted to hitch-hike from Laredo to New York”
In search of Primo Levi
On writing the life of a very private man
Arthur Koestler
An extract from the forthcoming second volume of memoirs by David Pryce Jones
Jakey
‘Everybody loved Jake Rosenheim, except his son Jimmy, who hated him’
Shakespeare: Mimesis and desire
“Why do we want what we want? Where do our desires come from? Why do we chase the things that elude us?” A dialogue between René Girard and Robert Pogue Harrison, introduced by Cynthia Haven
Corbyn waves the flag of anti-Semitism
A New York lecture
Ghost Dancers
Six new poems
Unpublished poems by Robert Conquest
The hitherto unknown wartime poems by Robert Conquest, with commentary by his wife and editor Elizabeth, take us back to a time when national survival was in mortal peril
Patriotism, cosmopolitanism and democracy
‘A sudden reassertion of national sovereignty and identity is perceived by many as a reversal of what has come to resemble a natural order of things’
Bachelor
A new Chicago short story by Joseph Epstein
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