Writing

Layla Benitez-James Trapeze A rabbit might be taken away from a butcher by two different people and prepared separately; I mean, the structural integrity of my...

One of the stand-out gardens at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show appeared to replicate the pea in its structure. ‘The Seedlip Garden’ had...

The Lighthouse Markhouse Road So far from the wine-dark sea, a displaced monument to faith and absurdity at the turn of a neat, Victorian street. Still, the treacherous rocks...

Anne Serre (tr. Mark Hutchinson) The Governesses ‘One less,’ thought the elderly gentleman to himself as he folded up his telescope. This one wouldn’t be wriggling...

Europe is a wasteland in Will Stone’s third collection The Sleepwalkers. The poet portrays the continent as ‘What’s left of burned out stars’ in...

Salt Slow, Julia Armfield, Pan Macmillan, 2019, pp.208, £12.99 (hardback) This electric, enthralling collection of short stories from Julia Armfield owns its influences upfront. In...

It is tempting to read Frankenstein as a means of understanding Mary Shelley. 200 years after the novel was first published, Alice Dunn asks,...

Dur e Aziz Amna received second prize in our Short Story Competition 2017.  The year Asma moved in with us, we were living in a two-family...

Shakespeare in Love, Noel Coward Theatre It is so rare to find a play that has perfected the balance between comedy, romance and tragedy – but...

We spoke to Patricia McCarthy, one of the judges for our Poetry Prize 2017, who gave a bit of advice on entering this year's competition. As...

Following on from his brilliant attack on intellectual conservatism in 2016's Pretentiousness: Why It Matters, Dan Fox's new long-form essay Limbo finds the frieze editor all...

Andy Armitage's pamphlet is among a number of new releases from the poetry press Half-Moon Books, which is based in Otley, West Yorkshire, where...

Arriving at 48 Albemarle Street you immediately enter a stripped-back environment; surrounded by exposed brick, wood and metal. This industrial interior makes a refreshing...

Birthday (1942) hangs opposite the entrance to the first room. Tanning stands proud yet forlorn, shirt as open as the door which she holds,...

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of T. S. Eliot's death, the great and the good of the literary world have rolled out tributes, readings,...

While looking through our archive recently we came across this review by Evelyn Waugh of Nancy Mitford's novel Don't Tell Alfred from 1960. Displaying...

Kaleidoscopic is one of the words used to describe the work of Clayton Vomero, his narratives finding their flow not in the rules of...

In 2010, I moved to the Philippines to work as a journalist, taking my then partner Donna and four-year-old stepdaughter Daisy. Our first day...

Exposure, Olivia Sudjic, Pensinsula Press, 2018, pp. 127, £6 Exposure, the new book by Olivia Sudjic, elegantly dissects the multi-layered web of anxieties particular to...

London is full of nice places spoilt by too many people. Covent Garden, Richmond and Tate Modern would be delightful if you could halve...

We had a quick chat with the judges of our 2018 Poetry Prize - Sophie Collins, Mark Ford and Les Robinson - to give...

Last night the winners of The Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses were announced, with this year’s announcement signalling a re-structuring of the...

Notes from the Dream House encloses half a century of films reviewed for the Observer by legendary critic Philip French. The book is a compact reminder of French’s immense knowledge of film and the cinematic world, spanning from 1963 to 2013, almost half the history of film, throughout which French's ability to convey dense ideas in a short and easily digestible format shines through, whether the high-brow or low-brow is being reviewed.

John Singer Sargent – Portraits of Artists and Friends, National Portrait Gallery 12 February – 25 May 2015 If you did not know this was...