Explore Essays and memoir
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A Plausible Portrait
Ted Hodgkinson
‘My friends say I am secretive and devious,’ he wrote in the introduction to Picasso and Dora. ‘They’re right.’
A Plug for Bukowski
Henry Davis
‘There is an American literature that is anti-intellectual, apolitical and anti-social.’
A Poet in Cuba
Reinaldo Arenas
‘Perfect totalitarian systems have always been in the vanguard: they modify not only the past and the future, but they also abolish the present.’
A Portrait of My Mother
Michael Collins (Photographer)
Photographer Michael Collins on his mother’s life following a series of strokes.
A Prisoner of the Holy War
Wendell Steavenson
‘Thayr held out. He would not betray his country, he would not betray his leader.’
A question of identity
Dubravka Ugrešić
‘One of the first things a child learns is the sentiment: My country is… And so begins the homeland briefing that lasts from the cradle to the grave.’
A Rationalist in the Jungle
Héctor Abad
‘A pale-faced, near-sighted urbanite like me is nothing less than handicapped in the heart of the jungle.’
A Report on Music in Ukraine
Ed Vulliamy
‘Nights at the opera in Ukraine – where everything, including every kind of music, has changed.’
Ed Vulliamy on music in Ukraine.
