Light reading

Lucy Sparrow's world of felt . (Via Becca.) This is my favorite: Cross-referencing: Alan Hollinghurst on "the Bourbon, the suga...

At the Guardian, John Mullan reviews Christopher Plumb's new book on exotic animals in Georgian London : The Earl of Shelburne, later to...

By the time we got there, we were pretty much just due to collapse in the hotel room! (This was predicted in advance.) Fortunately it was ...

Two nice eighteenth-century bits: "Puzzle purse" a.k.a. love token at the Houghton Library ; Road maps ! (Heyeresque....)

Swimming in the Thames .

In short, one of the best conferences I've ever attended . Incredibly stimulating and enjoyable: also, they treated us like kings and q...

In Cayman, my mother and I saw blue iguanas and dined lavishly at Michael's Genuine and Casa 43 (not to mention Fidel Murphy's ),...

Life re-entry is always a bit overwhelming, especially when it's so hot in NYC and I've been away for many weeks. I have just spent...

At the LRB, Tom Keymer on the latest edited volume of Burney's court journals (subscriber only): Burney’s writing process was highly se...

Meakin Armstrong interviews Etgar Keret at Guernica . Here's a bit that especially caught my eye (I want to read this book): Hebrew is ...

The Big Hedgehog Map . Also (via Tyler Cowen) Day of the Hedgehog !

Ah, I continue to fight the battle against the easy allure of Facebook and the way it saps blogging vim - it has been compounded, on this tr...

[David Mallet], Of Verbal Criticism: An Epistle to Mr. Pope. Occasioned by Theobald’s Shakespear, and Bentley’s Milton (London: Lawton Gil...

From Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland : [O]ne generation of ignorance effaces the whole series of unwritten hist...

I have taken a long time to get around to writing this up, partly I think out of reluctance to contemplate the whole question but also partl...