The cover of Russell Banks’s mountain-sized novel Cloudsplitter features an actual photo of Owen Brown, the son of John Brown—the hero of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” whose terrorist band murdered proponents of slavery in Kansas and attacked Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859 on what he considered direct orders from God, helping spark the Civil War.
Some of the best US TV shows are extremely difficult to follow in the UK, with weird scheduling and idiosyncratic DVD releases
It can feel like a draining and dispiriting scavenger hunt,…
Called the world’s most important psychologist, Daniel Kahneman inspired the trend for pop-psychology books, won a Nobel in economics and has devoted his life to studying the logic of…
Five street artists nominate their favourite living artist in their field
I first became aware of Hambleton’s work in Naples in 1984. He doesn’t use…
Alice Oswald thinks The Iliad has been turned into a public school poem that glamorises war. So she has rewritten it – with the footsoldiers as heroes. The poet explains herself to Sarah…