Sitemap - 2022 - The Common Reader

"One feels a fool when one ostentatiously attacks a quite irreproachable counterpane."

"How snug England is in the winter."

"I have yet to find a new home in London."

Let’s chat about Christmas reading

The Moon, Sixpence, and Sally Rooney

Year in Review

How to write like Malcolm Gladwell

The books I enjoyed most this year

When Eisenhower's father died

Katherine Rundell's anatomy of wonders

1825: the first modern financial crisis

“I can’t remember a single thing I’ve done in that office.”

Are we contributing to our moral decline every time we turn on Netflix?

The Great Woman Theory of Vote Leave, Annie Ernaux, Tosca, T.S. Eliot and Hokusai

What happened to Liz Truss?

What about Shakespeare as the national epic?

Finely ordered multiplicity. The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis, by Jason M. Baxter

Realism and fairy tale in Silas Marner

In defence of the Great Man Theory of history

Barnaby Rudge is underrated

What is a common reader?

Persuasion should have been called Consequences

Noah Smith interview

Make better anthologies

Auden was the best poet of the twentieth century

What are the limits on the use of the very best talent?

Mute, inglorious Vivian Maier

Philip Larkin. Poet of the almost.

Anna Gát, startup founder and late bloomer

The Pachinko Parlour, by Elisa Shua Dusapin

The Biographies of Westminster Abbey

The Fortunes of Francis Barber, by Michael Bundock

Light flashes. John Donne by Katherine Rundell

Robin Hanson, interview

The Last Days of Roger Federer, Geoff Dyer

Mark Landis and the art of freedom

Homeschool update: your education is your life

Sarah Harkness, late bloomer

The Last Jubilee? Long live the Queen...

Have we learnt how to let people leave the royal family?

Possible endings for The Winter's Tale

The Biography Conundrum — Was Boswell smarter than Johnson?

Pachinko, Min Jin Lee

Recent books: philosophy, people watching, Peanuts, self help

No Touching, Ketty Rouf

Helen Lewis interview

I quit my job to write a book about late bloomers

Polyrama and the art of character. Shakespeare, Bruegel, Tati.

Notes on Lydia Davis

Samuel Johnson and Progress Studies

Free, by Lea Ypi

Inside the head of modern, young Russia

Charles Moore interview

Six underrated detective novels

Economics in Sense and Sensibility

Samuel Johnson: Reading for Wisdom

Samuel Smiles: late bloomer with a side hustle. Part II

Samuel Smiles: late bloomer with a side hustle. Part I

One Pair of Hands, Monica Dickens

Survey responses

The secret to being a great writer

Salon about Elizabeth Jenkins

Reader Survey

"She sees visions of the departed, unfortunately too often of the people she most disliked." James Lees-Milne, New Year's Day, 1947