The Latest Breaking News from William Blake

The first line of the song Cities by Talking Heads is, “Think of London, a small city/It’s dark, dark in the daytime.” That is an American perspective, but as Londoners travel to the station or bus stop and then from work to home again, it does feel like being in…

The first time I saw one of Tacita Dean’s monumental film-works it was by chance.

The artist’s dramatic site-specific work, partly a memorial to artist Khadija Saye, who died in the fire, is like a transition between life and death or grief and acceptance

One of his paintings recently sold for £50m – but William Blake was right when he said Reynolds ‘depressed art’, as this show demonstrates all too well

From Bosch to Dante to Sartre, and from Hell’s Angels to Hell’s Kitchen to Hellraiser, visions of the infernal location and condition still resonate

The temptation to chuck out the old is strong, but can only be part of the answer

In reading for my festschrift essay for John Witte ("The Influence of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition on the Common Law"), I ran across this fascinating paragraph by Anthony Grafton on how Johannes Kepler didn't publish a monograph on chronology (i.e., the study of historical dates) but instead developed his scholarship…

From childhood in London to radicalist notoriety to global wanderings, this fragmentary memoir of a ‘Pound Shop prophet’ is thrillingly ambitious

Covid disruption prompted lobbying for limits on opening of green space famed for its sweeping views of city