Naturally, the details of personal experience vary enormously, but theres a charming ideal of what a grandmother is that we can imagine or piece together from fragments of benign memories.
The Friend who Listens
Given how much we value friendship, its strange that we’re not so focused on one of its central pleasures: being listened to.
Being Up Late at Night
Its very late; more conventional people have long ago turned in, but we have stayed up, to read, to think, to talk with a long forgotten person: ourselves.
Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
An Augustan poet and a friend of Virgil, Sextus Propertius came to prominence as a result of his love elegies, which are the source …
Less is More
Over time, this phrase came to be linked to German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. But as revealed in Mies van der Rohe …
Ever tried, ever failed?
No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. For Samuel Beckett, failure was the ultimate goal of art. As he wrote in Three Dialogues: ‘to be …
Time Devours Everything
From Metamorphoses, one of the most influential works in Western Culture, the above quotation reminds us that we cannot escape the …
Terry Waite, A Patient Man
Terry Waite was held hostage for 5 years in Lebanon in the late 1980s, after having gone there as the Church of England’s envoy to …
Do we exist?
Do you and I exist? The easiest way to answer would be to defer to the great minds that have been wrestling with this question for …
The Good Life
In different cultures and times, the question of what it means to live well has challenged some of the world’s greatest minds. Aristotle …
The Number Zero
There probably aren’t many pages in the annals of human achievement dedicated to donkey traders. But perhaps there should be: without …
SUM: Descent of Species
In the afterlife, you are treated to a generous opportunity: you can choose whatever you would like to be in the next life. Would …