Category Archives: Uncategorized

Discovered During Repair Work

Article on the website of the Marshwood Vale Magazine about the remarkable work of the Portland Global Friendship Group with migrants from the Bibby Stockholm. It appeared in print in the September – October issue of the PN Review.

Semyon Lipkin and the Russia That Must Be There Somewhere

A review of A Close Reading of Fifty-Three Poems by Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin and Testimony From the Literary Memoirs of Semyon Lipkin in the Jan.-Feb. issue of PN Review.

Megaphone Man and the Echo at the British Museum

The British Museum’s withdrawal from its sponsorship deal with BP earlier this year was rightly praised. How might its collections be more actively used to address the climate crisis? My thoughts are published today in the Dec.-Jan. 2024 issue of the London Magazine.

The Heritage of Humanism and Enlightenment in Exile Literature

Chapter about Stefan Zweig’s Erasmus in ‘Das Erbe von Humanismus und Aufklärung in der Exilliteratur’, vol. 17 in the Schriftenreihe des Stefan Zweig Zentrum Salzburg. Published by Königshausen & Neumann, with Margit Dirscherl, Arturo Larcati and Ritchie Robertson editors.

The Starry Parabola

On pages 50-1 of the July 2023 issue of The Marshwood Vale +, I’ve a piece about the efforts of actor Martin Clunes to evict his neighbours Theo Langton and Ruth McGill.

Huge Dolls Get Mandolined

A review of ‘Poppy’ by Joseph Minden, for the PN Review. A provocative sequence of poems about the English and memory.

On Findingness

‘On Findingness’ is about my home town and Bertrand Russell and that’s not all. It’s in the Jan. – Feb. 2023 issue of the PN Review.

Just Look at the Street

Essay about Chernivtsi, Ukraine, and the Bukowinisch-Galizische Literaturstrasse (Bucovina-Galicia Literary Trail) in the February-March issue of the London Magazine.

Forbidden Topics, Long Shadows

My review of Georgiy Kasianov’s ‘Memory Crash’ (2022) can be read here. His book is an essential guide to Ukraine’s internal debates about the past and how these continue to shape its relations with neighbouring states, east and west.

Sand City In the Rain

An article in the Nov. – Dec. 2022 issue of the PN Review about Chernivtsi / Czernowitz, a city in southwestern Ukraine. It’s mainly concerned with the work being done to keep alive the memory of those extraordinary writers who emerged there in the early / mid-twentieth century. Paul Celan is only the most famous […]