A nice girl like Simone
A profile of the French intellectual Simone De Beauvoir examines her complicated life and legacy.
Works in progress – the turbulent tales of William Hogarth
An examination of the work of the great painter and printmaker William Hogarth, a lively chronicler of 18th Century Britain.
The Early Internet, Explained by One Weird Celine Dion Fan Site
The story of a different internet era, told through a website called Celine Dreams, whose zenith was between 2003 and 2007, and whose purpose was for its founder to gather and then interpret visitors’ dreams about Celine Dion.
Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction
A meditative piece on the value of reading books, in comparison with our digital lives – “the internet, is a nowhere space, a shallow time. It is a flat and impenetrable surface. But with a book, we dive in; we are sucked in; we are immersed, body and soul.”
Here at the End of All Things
The cartography of fantasy worlds, from Westeros to Middle Earth and beyond.
The Invention of the ‘Salvator Mundi’
As the author of this piece puts it – “What connects Leonardo da Vinci, a Russian oligarch, a Baton Rouge sheet metal man, a Saudi prince, several major museums, and a Swiss tycoon?’. The answer – Salvator Mundi.
How Notre Dame inspired Henri Matisse, who depicted the cathedral as a living memory
The Washington Post’s art critic examines two radically different depictions of Notre Dame painted by Henri Matisse over a decade apart.
A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions
This story about a hit novelist’s complex web of fabrications has gone viral this week, unsurprisingly, as it offers readers an intoxicating combination of literary intrigue, society gossip, and schadenfreude.