In the lists: those desert island titles
By Paul Skinner Of her ‘desert island books’, the novelist Penelope Lively wrote: ‘there are three titles that I would pick, because, for me, they are perhaps the ones that have most…
A barney with Barnes
By Paul Skinner In the London Review of Books (8 May 2025), Julian Barnes’ notice of Blake Gopnik’s book, The Maverick’s Museum: Albert Barnes and His American Dream (Ecco) includes the observation that ‘you…
1925 and all that (a handful of Fordian notes)
By Paul Skinner Glancing at any recent headline, it may come as no surprise that some of us are willingly absorbed in another year entirely, precisely a hundred years back. In publication…
