Most Recent. In Arts & Letters – Spirituality.

Arts & Letters – Spirituality

Arvind Dilawar- Oscar Wilde’s Gay Socialist Vision

Everyone’s favorite aristocratic dandy was also an outspoken socialist In 1884, George Bernard Shaw joined the newly formed Fabian Society, which was dedicated to advancing democratic socialism in Great Britain, primarily through the gradual dissemination of socialist ideas. Some time later, Shaw spoke at a meeting of the Society in London, with an unexpected attendee: Oscar Wilde. Wilde was so taken by the subject that he produced his own views...

John Mullan-The Mystery of Charles Dickens by A.N Wilson review – a great writer’s dark side

Was Dickens’s fiction shaped by the nastiness he never consciously acknowledged? A sprightly retelling of a well-known narrative Near the end of The Mystery of Charles Dickens, AN Wilson quotes at length from a letter written by Philip Larkin to his lover Monica Jones. The poet has just reread Great Expectations, and is reflecting on the novelist’s attention-seeking tricks: “Say what you like about Dickens as an entertainer, he cannot be considered...

Norman Lebrecht -The sadder side of summer

Tragedy struck Gustav Mahler, the archetypal summer composer, in 1907 Standing on the balcony at the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, where Claude Debussy finished off La Mer, it struck me that composers come in two seasons — winter and summer. The winter sloggers chip away come sleet, come shine, delivering a crisp new score in March for premiere in September. Tchaikovsky was a winter symphonist. In summer, he lounged around his dacha...