Sitemap - 2026 - The Common Reader
My new essay about Samuel Johnson
AI and the future of the humanities
What is literary criticism if it is not close reading? Art, Magic, and Common Sense.
Will the end of reading be the end of democracy too?
Philip Hensher: How Can You Kill a Book Like That?
Maria Edgeworth and Adam Smith
Gender parity in fiction writing?
Replacing Orwell with Anna Funder is part of a bigger problem on the OCR A-level syllabus
Submerged memory: C.S. Lewis and the art of forgetting
Nothing is Boring. Arnold Bennett's Self Help
Modernist Gothic in Copenhagen
Don't extend UK copyright. It will tax the arts and reduce creativity.
The ordinary sublime of the American diner
Elizabeth Bowen: as good as Henry James
Does it matter if you don't like the characters?
Manuel M. Novillo interviews me
My review of Nolan's Odyssey in GQ Australia
The Odyssey is about sons questing for their fathers.
Will Imagination be the Key to Thriving in the Age of AI?
America Should Love Itself Again
The 2026 Hyperstition Unslop AI fiction writing contest
Is an English degree good preparation to become Prime Minister?
Perpetual Summer in the "feminine middlebrow"
Two poets talk about the stock market
A.R. Ammons and arts patronage
Memorising Shakespeare's sonnets
Childhood days, lemonade, romance
Marilyn, Transcendence, Durham, Novels, Dulles, Amis, Proust, Lost Lambs
What it is like to daydream about Proust
Should there be a Library of Britain?
Zena Hitz: Gulliver's Travels and the Failures of Human Understanding
What it is like to read Proust
Something understood. How to read poetry.
The literary world needs to wake up!
To vex the world. Jonathan Swift’s Frustrated Humor
What should be on a list of almost Great Books?
Bull Run, butterflies, Jeep Cat, prom
You have no idea how many legends have walked these halls and what’s worse, you don’t care.
He says the early petal-fall is past
Loved, Jefferson, Exile, Hermit, Brontë
Oliver Traldi: Jane Austen and the Defence of Virtue
Growling in a corner: Samuel Johnson’s lost years
A.A. Milne's crossword-puzzle heart in the Hundred Acre Wood
The Whitsun Weddings, Philip Larkin
The Stranger, The Drama, and the criticism of Ben Lerner
The New Dark Ages: James Marriott in conversation with Henry Oliver
Steaming manholes, dolphins, and burnt-out houses
wisdom through the awful grace of God
The Future of Reading, the Honest Broker, and Michel Houellebecq
Spring-time, night-time, rabbits and raccoons
Just give Helen DeWitt some money
Buddenbrooks, a masterwork of business and real life. A novel to love and live with.
Teaching poetry to LDS students raised on the KJV
Love Calls us to the Things of This World
Laura Thompson on Agatha Christie: Shakespeare, Murder, and the Art of Simplicity
Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
The Wealth of Nations is a classic of English Literature
Ruth Scurr: The Life and Work of John Aubrey
Through the carnage I moved with a callous composure.
Do more people write poetry than read it?
Further thoughts on some of the topics from my 'Conversation with Tyler'
250 years of The Wealth of Nations
My appearance on Conversations with Tyler
Naomi Kanakia: How Great Are the Great Books?
C19th English novels overrated?
Lázár, Pound, Kees, Lavoie, Smith, Shklovsky, Fantastic, England, Updike
Elizabeth Bowen on Jane Austen's Englishness
The Liberal Spirit of Literary Criticism
Underground aliens and the future of humanity in 1871
Pricks, Devils, and Phlegm. John Aubrey and the Fertile Facts of English Biography.
Are books and babies compatible?
Fierce, wild, intractability. Emily Brontë's untameable spirit
Twenty-one reactions to Wuthering Heights
Confederate flags and Shenandoah's timelessness
How Naomi Kanakia read the Great Books
Hermione Lee: Tom Stoppard. “It’s Wanting to Know That Makes Us Matter”
HENRY JAMES. Plus: Small, Engines, Fairies, Wardrobe, Measure, Mirth, Life, Weird, Affinities
Come and be my intern (to talk about J.S. Mill)
Andrew Gelman reviews Erin Somers
Good letters made good men. Why should we kick against the Pricks, when we can walk on Roses?
Bacon, Swift, Smith: Three anniversaries in 2026
Literature, politics, and the future of the humanities
An economist asks: What is the value of reading great literature like Eliot and Tolstoy?