In Darwin, Australia, sometime in 1958, an old man lay dying in hospital. He asked to see—of all people—the British writer Malcolm Muggeridge. They didn’t know each other, but Muggeridge was touring Australia and the old man had heard him on the radio. As Muggeridge recalled it, . . . . Continue Reading »
Washington, D.C.’s cultural apparatchiks have long hankered for a Frank Gehry showpiece. On the eve of the new millennium, the director of Washington’s Corcoran Gallery implored Gehry, then basking in accolades for his titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, to enter a competition to . . . . Continue Reading »
Marc Fumaroli was a rare figure: a Catholic intellectual who won the highest honors of European and American intellectual life while resisting its dominant trends. Continue Reading »
For those of us who were adults before the advent of the Internet, a three-ring binder was the best way to keep track of our favorite recipes. Most of the women I know still have one, filled with recipes torn from magazines or printed from websites, handwritten by friends on index cards and . . . . Continue Reading »
It is early still, and dark. Next to me my sister sleeps, but I wake with the sound of my father preparing for work. He is soft, so as not to disturb my mother. The window stirs, a ripple of white on the room. Then—there’s light on my eyes, morning light, and the sound of my father’s . . . . Continue Reading »