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...
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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 20, 2019
Al-chemie
Reading all the depressing news about plastic, which has now found its way to the bottom of the Marianas Trench – I’m reminded again of a...
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
- 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
- Jun 3, 2019
Trump v Mueller in Plato’s footnotes
Two pictures tell a thousand words. In his recent public appearance, Robert Mueller thought he’d been clear, or as clear as the peculiar...
Richard Farr
- Jun 2, 2019
Nasty journalism
What with global warming to worry about, and Syria, and the Sixth Extinction, we really shouldn’t be spending any of our attention on...
Richard Farr
- May 1, 2019
RIP Les Murray 1938-2019
The brilliant old curmudgeon, Australia’s great Bard of Bunyah, is dead. I found his political, social and religious outlook by turns...
Richard Farr
- Feb 28, 2019
The brutal irony of brutalised Brutalists
In this article in the Guardian on the subject of famous “Brutalist” buildings under threat from demolition, I note with interest and...
Richard Farr
- Feb 15, 2019
Scheming Brits
I’ve been reading about a debate over the UK national pension scheme for teachers. This expression rolls off the British ear unnoticed,...
Richard Farr
- Jan 11, 2019
Well anyway, all ends well
The characters’ motivations make so little sense that theories abound about missing or garbled text. And some of its faults would be easy...
Richard Farr
- Dec 18, 2018
Ralph and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra in the Olivier at the National Theatre; a bracingly modern techno-thriller with executive suites, machine guns, and...
Richard Farr
- Dec 17, 2018
Brilliant idiom
Over dinner in London, a fascinating discussion is launched by my American friend John A., who has been in-country for months but is...
Richard Farr
- Nov 27, 2018
Lynching the language too
No surprise that the President has rushed to the aid of Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, whose campaign in Mississippi has been threatened by a...
Richard Farr
- Oct 18, 2018
R.I.P Mary Midgley, 1919-2018
The excellent and hugely underrated philosopher Mary Midgley has died at the age of 99, shortly after completing yet another book. (She...
Richard Farr
- Oct 16, 2018
Suffering from an impacted adjective
This morning’s Seattle Times sports section has an entire page devoted to Seahawks owner Paul Allen, who died yesterday. The ghastly...
Richard Farr
- Oct 11, 2018
Pry social media from your own trembling hands?
Should you place a hood over the evil Facebook, blast Twitter out of its tree, and rip up all your Instagrams? You really should,...
Richard Farr
- Oct 8, 2018
Authoritarianism and its antidote
After so many headlines about the men who want to turn the world into kindling and warm their hands over the flames (in just this...
Richard Farr
- Oct 1, 2018
Oh … poo(p).
As a British writer who has lived in the US for 35 years, I constantly face the problem that I cannot remember which of my Englishes is...
Richard Farr
- Aug 16, 2018
On Tyranny
Here are seven favorite quotations from historian Timothy Snyder’s superb short book of the same name: When the men with guns who have...
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