Darkness visible

Dear Simon, Once again, the December 2025 issue had lots of memories to write about. Starting from the front, Gertcha! – I did love Chas and Dave, as did my husband. Of course, the family always watch

Sibyls , the book born of Ruth Fainlight’s poems and Leonard Baskin’s prints, became a memento of friendship, beauty and sorrow for its author

“Where are we to begin?”, Virginia Woolf asks in her essay “How to Read a Book”. “How are we to bring order into this multitudinous chaos and so get the deepest and widest pleasures from what we read?

LETTERS

There’s no telling what will make a nonfiction bestseller. Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and the late Erich von Däniken’s junk archaeology about “ancient astronauts” both seem implausible

“And there are other things even worthier of conservation.” Having devoured At Home (1958), the autobiography of the novelist William Plomer, E. M. Forster wrote to his friend Plomer to tell him the e