In 1815, the British and American navies were at war. The war in question was the economic warfare of British blockaders. It was backed by the naval strength that made possible attacks on American ...

“I was asked to write a five-minute orchestra work expressing the current world situation and to do it as soon as possible.” That is an interesting, possibly daunting, assignment. What was “the ...

While we are accustomed to thinking of the Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863–1923) as an essentially cheerful figure, a man whose scenes are imbued with a refulgent Mediterranean light, ...

“Orphism” is what, exactly? According to Guillaume Apollinaire, who coined the term, It is the art of painting new structures out of elements which have not been borrowed from the visual sphere, but ...

Though he didn’t live to see it built, Sam Wanamaker left London a remarkable legacy. Visiting the city from America, as a young man, he made, as every actor should, a pilgrimage to the site of ...

Although I have been writing for publication for more than forty years, it always pleases (and surprises) me when someone writes to tell me that he or she has read something that I have written. It is ...

There is an old Cape Cod legend about a whale named Crook Jaw. The story goes that Ichabod Paddock, a masterly shore whaler from Yarmouth, was time and again routed by the great leviathan. His usually ...

Although both correspondents in this selection of letters were authors, their identities and professional purviews were markedly distinct. Shirley Hazzard (1931–2016) was a first-rate Australian ...

On Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers, by David Suisman.

On Shakespeare’s Tragic Art, by Rhodri Lewis.

Sabin Howard has been at the center of a battle over sculpture for over three decades. I first wrote about him in this space nearly twenty years ago, when I paid a visit to his studio in the South ...

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