Christopher Howse is an assistant editor of the Daily Telegraph.
Gladstone found something very strange indeed in Homer, but the world was treating the future prime minister warily when he published his findings. It was 1858, the year he sailed off to the Ionian Islands as ruling commissioner, to address his puzzled Italian-speaking subjects in classical Greek. But even if Gladstone really was mad, as
Outside my local pub it says in big letters ‘£500’, and underneath: ‘This is the fine if you take your drink out into the street.’ What law imposes this fine, no one knows. It could be something to do with 24-hour drinking legislation, or even anti-terror laws. The reason people want to take their drinks
In 1950, Irving Penn, working for Vogue in Paris, set himself up in a glass-roofed attic and, between fashion assignments, began a series of full-length portraits of tradesmen, inspired by the street portraits of Eugène Atget 50 years before. Later that year he continued the project in a painter’s studio in Chelsea. Penn found that
From Bonbon to Cha-cha, edited by Andrew Delahunty On the spine of From Bonbon to Cha-cha shines the silhouette, in gold leaf, of a dancing couple, which makes the volume look a little vulgar on the shelf. This is no mistake. The Strictly Come Dancing triumph of celebrity over expertise is to be applied to
Annie Leibovitz at Work, by Annie Leibovitz, edited from conversations with Sharon DeLano When Annie Leibovitz started out as a photographer in 1968 her heroes were Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank. Cartier-Bresson’s ‘decisive moment’ turned out to be the antithesis of the celebrity portraits that have defined her career — not only posed but contrived
Eric Ringmar has only been blogging since last year, but has already been sacked from his job as a lecturer at the London School of Economics. What did he do wrong? Nothing, by his account. First I must say parenthetically, for those who take no cognisance of such things, that blogs are no more than
In England by Don McCullin (Cape, £35) is, as might be expected, more gritty than pretty. Yet it is approachably humane compared with his famous war photography, where from Vietnam to Beirut the horrors are as terrible as Goya’s. McCullin escaped the London gangland of Finsbury Park by means of the photograph that forms the
Christopher Howse meets Mary Douglas, Britain’s foremost anthropologist, and learns the connection between ritual taboos and al-Qa’eda’s cells ‘It’s no good attacking enclaves,’ Mary Douglas said, dissecting a piece of guinea fowl on her plate. ‘It just makes them more firmly enclaves.’ When I had lunch with her, she sat upright in her chair, not
Spain doesn’t smell the same any more. At the airport, the very first impression used to be of bitter black tobacco smoke, more acrid than Balkan Sobranie, a harbinger of stronger smells beyond Customs. That smoke would follow you wherever human activity was to be found. It was the cantus firmus in the polyphony of
If you tell people there was no ox or ass in the stable where Jesus was born, they sometimes become quite irate, especially if they are convinced Christians. They believe in the marvellous Christmas story, and to deny the ox and ass seems tantamount to denying the Babe of Bethlehem. Of course, the ox and
Listing page content here Recent troubles in the Labour party were likened by more than one unsuccessful letter-writer to the Daily Telegraph to those of the army described by Petronius Arbiter nearly 2,000 years ago: We trained hard; but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams we would be reorganised.
Among the unexpected pieces of information in this enjoyable ramble among the picturesque ruins of the Latin language is the name of a good restaurant if you should find yourself at Larroque in Tarn. The advice comes under B, for Bonum vinum laetificat cor hominis, ‘good wine cheers the heart of man’, an adage written
I should like to claim the credit for the Bloomsbury English Dictionary’s inclusion of the word carminative. It did not appear in the dictionary’s previous incarnation as the Encarta World English Dictionary in 1999, and I pointed out the omission at the time. Perhaps finding that the words Encarta and World English did not sell
A 12th-century eyewitness at Sant- iago de Compostela described his fellow pilgrims: Some, such as the Greeks, hold the image of the cross in their hands; others distribute their possessions to the poor; some carry iron or lead for the construction of the basilica of the Apostle James; and others, who have been liberated by
Anglicans in the United States believe it is a good idea for bishops to express their homosexual preferences genitally with long-stay companions. Some people will believe anything. Others find it hard to believe in the event commemorated each 15 August, the Assumption into Heaven of the Virgin Mary. I can’t myself see it is any
Christopher Howse says that Malcolm Muggeridge, born 100 years ago, was very much a man of the 20th-century world – but rebelled against it Twenty years ago Malcolm Muggeridge, with a grimace of welcome, met me at Robertsbridge station, like many another. To reach the Sussex cottage that he shared with Kitty, his wife of
In ‘The Sussex Vampires’, Watson takes down from the shelf the great index volume for V; Holmes balances it on his knee and reads: Voyage of the Gloria Scott. Victor Lynch, the forger. Venomous lizard or gila … Vittoria, the circus belle. Vanderbilt and the Yeggman … Vipers. Vigor, the Hammersmith wonder… And then he