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Explore Essays and memoir

A Blow to the Head

A.L. Kennedy

‘I am looking for my dead grandfather in the British Library.’

A Boat Ride to the Confluence of the Two Niles

Isma’il Kushkush

‘April 2022 marked my first visit to my ancestral homeland in seven years.’

Memoir by Isma’il Kushkush.

A Bosnian Alphabet

Lawrence Norfolk

‘APOLOGY: A should be for Alphabet: the device I am resorting to in some desperation to structure my thoughts on this subject: my relations vis-à-vis two Yugoslavian wars.‘

A Brief Guide to Gender in India

Minal Hajratwala

‘Please be creative. This is only the beginning.’

A Brief History of a Musical Failure

Catherine Tice

‘At the end of the piece, there was silence, followed by a sudden thunder of feet and bows on the stands. A thrilling noise.’

A Burning Bird

O Thiam Chin

On intimacy and national service.

A Childhood in Broadmoor Hospital

Patrick McGrath

‘These were the friends of my early boyhood, men who twenty years earlier would still have been called ‘criminal lunatics’.‘

A Childhood in Terezin

Ivan Klíma

‘I am trying to reach, in memory, a time before the war began.’

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Peter Stamm & Michael Hofmann

Peter Stamm on the oldest barber in Switzerland, and Michael Hofmann on translating Peter Stamm.

A Cock Fight

Charles Nicholl

‘And now, the night before the fight, with the moon high and nearing the full, came the final preparation: we were taking him to Auguste.’

A Colossal Hoard

Ian Hamilton

‘For James Boswell, admiration was a busy, intimate affair.’

A Confession

Jess Row

‘I walk out of the theatre in a daze. I’ve glimpsed something. But a glimpse, as it turns out, is not enough.’

A Coup

Bruce Chatwin

‘You do not understand. In this country one understands nothing.’

A Different Century

Larry Towell

A photoessay on the Mennonite colonies of Mexico and in Canada.