The Tumbrel Diaries

My malapropism collection is expanding. To (a) “one foul swoop”—or, I suppose, “one fowl swoop”—(b) “pet noire,” and (c) “it never seems t...

This week I did what I should have done years ago—I got rid of the television. The cable man came today to disconnect me, and took away th...

The snag with checking a large manuscript ( The Finger: A Handbook ) is that although you get better at it as you go along, you also start...

Morning tea, again. I am going through the corrected manuscript of The Finger: A Handbook and am beginning to piece together tiny flecks ...

This long weekend I am tackling the manuscript of my next book, The Finger: A Handbook , which has returned from the copy editor with gra...

In his Island to Empire: 300 Years of British Art, 1550–1850 , Ron Radford cleared up the problem of the identity of Caroline Matilda Sother...

Earlier this week a learned friend and colleague of mine asked me if I was familiar with the fiction of Theodor Storm, the nineteenth-cent...

Among the most moving of all the great protest songs of the 1960s, and one which is still regularly performed by Joan Baez, bless her,...

David Sedaris’ article in the current issue of the New Yorker actually takes in the childhood memory of singing with his sister a version o...

There is a slightly odd piece in the current issue of the New Yorker in which David Sedaris describes an intimate encounter not so long a...