'This ostensibly trivial difference matters more than might be apparent, because it leaves room for a less-than-perfectly-formed Shakespeare.'

Gordon McMullan on Shakespeare and his collaborators
the-tls.co.uk/articles/early…

'Her trilogy of books examines how people conduct “normal” romantic relationships; how these relationships intersect at every stratum with class, church and state.'

Rozalind Dineen on normal hypocrites
the-tls.co.uk/articles/beaut…

'Decades after it had become clear that they would never raise the funds to do so, they all wished to return home.'

John Samuel Harpham on the last slave ship to reach America
the-tls.co.uk/articles/survi…

'The city has expanded to such an extent that they no longer mark its outer boundary but the beginning of its centre.'

Alev Adil (alev adil) on a portrait of Istanbul
the-tls.co.uk/articles/to-th…

Richard Dunn (Richard Dunn) on why science is ‘more like candyfloss than a boiled sweet’
the-tls.co.uk/articles/break…

'Borders often are, or are imagined as, perilous places: Bandit Country, No Man’s Land.'

Ben Rogers (Ben Rogers) on the borders we have created
the-tls.co.uk/articles/invis…

''For Marcus, Emerson ‘was an aphorist forever seeking the minimalist blow to the head’.''

Andrew Epstein: Hokey mystic or hard-headed abolitionist and sceptic? the-tls.co.uk/articles/glad-…

'Gates underscores how writing in Black American culture has always been a political act.'

Douglas Field (Douglas Field) on how Black Americans found their voice the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-b…

'The Holy Ghost had a specific job in mind for Very: the writing of sonnets.'

Heather Cass White on American sonnets commissioned by the Holy Ghost the-tls.co.uk/articles/gods-…

'Can we, asks Elkin, even know ourselves, let alone another?'

Lucasta Miller on a psychoanalyst’s struggle to find self-insight
the-tls.co.uk/articles/scaff…

'How do two people, who have taken fifty years to establish, separately, the “music” of themselves, even begin to harmonize?'

Hal Jensen on a fledgling relationship seen through multiple gazes
the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-i…

'Not only can we not rule out the threat of simulation, we have good reason to rule it in!'

Kieran Setiya on the world as an illusion of technology
the-tls.co.uk/articles/reali…

'Nineteenth-century liberal thought emphasized personal liberty and responsibility, so it is not surprising that “fitness” shifted from being a stroke of communal luck to a sign of individual excellence.'

Irina Dumitrescu: What is the point of physical... the-tls.co.uk/articles/fitne…

'Radiators clatter insistently, food is a gruesome necessity and bodies are resolutely unsexy.'

James Cahill (James Cahill) on a novel of gay love, grief and memory the-tls.co.uk/articles/cinem…

''The God who became Man to save Humankind by being tortured and killed on the cross is ‘leaning in’ to the worst job ever.''

James Hall on Michelangelo’s perfection of the embodied mind
the-tls.co.uk/articles/miche…

Ian Sansom on a messy, angry chronicling of the east London art scene the-tls.co.uk/articles/art-p…

'There is irony in the way in which the search by Christians to control interpretation led to further competing interpretations'

Catherine Conybeare on Constantine and the making of Christian unity
the-tls.co.uk/articles/chris…

''Vaneigem argues that Christianity is a late and mendacious product of the ‘state religion’ instituted by the Empire.''

Euan Cameron: Laments for the lost variety of early Christian thought the-tls.co.uk/articles/heres…

My latest for The TLS

An African History of Africa by Zeinab Badawi | Book review | The TLS the-tls.co.uk/articles/an-af…

'Schwitzgebel argues that the US responds to opportunities and threats not less intelligently than a small mammal.'

Julian Baggini (Julian Baggini) on how reality escapes our understanding the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-w…