RIP John le Carré - brilliant and underrated to the last
I met him when I was eleven or twelve, because one of his sons was in my class. He arrived in a Rolls Royce, talked affably in the...
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Richard Farr
- Dec 9, 2020
Time's wingèd chariot
I was amused and a little disturbed recently to stumble upon both a couple of life expectancy calculators (here's one) and a page on the...
Richard Farr
- Nov 4, 2020
Election hangover
I'm having a pretty hard time handling the election results this morning. As I write, Biden may still narrowly win, but the vote mainly...
Richard Farr
- Oct 12, 2020
It's a Humpty Trumpty World
Language matters; three words that matter more than most right now - because our politicians are encouraging us to get it all wrong about...
Richard Farr
- Jul 22, 2020
First names and social distancing
Not being of the Fascism-Curious Party, I will vote for Joe Biden in the Fall. Being sufficiently revolted by the FCP that I have...
Richard Farr
- Jul 16, 2020
Spartan talk
Above: Edgar Degas and Jacques Louis David with competing erotic visions of the Spartans. Or Lacedaemonians. Rooting about in Thucydides,...
Richard Farr
- Jun 10, 2020
Richard Farr
- Jun 3, 2020
Tim Allen and the doorknob question
Recently I was sent an opinion-piece written by the comedian Tim Allen; it defends (or anyway announces) a list of "conservative"...
Richard Farr
- May 30, 2020
Lopez Island circumnavigation
I'm back in Seattle after a four-day adventure in my trusty kayak, circumnavigating Decatur, Lopez, and Shaw Islands in the San Juans....
Richard Farr
- May 22, 2020
Optimism - and my new favorite news site
Doing some research on iconic speeches in times of crisis, I am struck by the common thread: all of them - Lincoln's Second Inaugural,...
Richard Farr
- May 11, 2020
Privacy creep
As Orwell almost said, Little DoubleThinker Is Scamming You. This morning The New York Times treated us to a piece by one of their...
Richard Farr
- Mar 17, 2020
Testing, testing ... coronavirus and a dangerous drug called Fiction
A lot of people are being tested for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. (Not enough in my neck of the planet, thanks to our...
Richard Farr
- Jan 3, 2020
It was a peach while it lasted
For three years now, an oily moral poison has been leaking from the wrecked hull of that stately grand dame of the democratic oceans, the...
Richard Farr
- Nov 25, 2019
Italo Calvino on how to be an efficient writer
“Every morning I tell myself, Today has to be productive—and then something happens that prevents me from writing. Today . . . what is...
Richard Farr
- Nov 22, 2019
Happy birthday George Eliot!
One of the most luminous, most humane intelligences in history was born two hundred years ago today: But the effect of her being on those...
Richard Farr
- Nov 18, 2019
English and its Historie
Why is English so much simpler in grammar and richer in vocabulary than so many other languages? (Why does the OED need twenty volumes?)...
Richard Farr
- Nov 5, 2019
Borne back into the past
Apparently the new season of The Crown will take us into the 1960s and actor David Wilmott will play union leader Arthur Scargill. This...
Richard Farr
- Nov 4, 2019
Macboris: a fragment from a lost play about power and nihilism
Discovered recently among the manuscripts of that great English dramatist Willie A. Peakshamers: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...
Richard Farr
- Oct 25, 2019
Rammed with tourists?
Today the Guardian – or Grauniad, as we lovers of its many typos call it – recommends the lovely Devon village of Tavistock as “not...
Richard Farr
- Sep 20, 2019
Climbing Pen y Fan
The highest point in the Brecon Beacons, and Wales, and southern Britain. It was supposed to be raining. The wind was ferocious, but we...