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Articles by Guy Stagg
Losing faith in New Atheism: ‘The God Delusion’ 20 years on
Who is the most unpleasant character in all of fiction? For Richard Dawkins, it’s the God of the Hebrew Bible, a ‘petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully’. This much-quoted attack comes from The God Delusion, which was published 20 years ago.
Powell and Pressburger’s eternal England
In 1975, Martin Scorsese visited Britain. He had just completed Taxi Driver and was perhaps the hottest young director in Hollywood. Arriving in London, he began asking about Powell and Pressburger, the creative partnership whose films from the 1940s and 1950s had inspired his love of cinema. Eventually, a meeting was arranged with Michael Powell, now a shy pensioner who was struggling to pay the bills, since his film about a serial killer, Peeping Tom, had been banned by the censor in 1960.
Looking for Katrin: Rory MacLean goes in search of his dead wife
Geography of Heaven: Travel to the Hereafter Abacus, pp.336, 22 One September, Rory MacLean’s wife, Katrin, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Seven months later she was dead. The couple had been married for 32 years. In the wake of his wife’s death, MacLean decided to write a book about the afterlife. He had already written books about Russia and Myanmar, Berlin and Crete, but it was not clear where this journey should begin.
The Traveller by Andrea Wulf — the fascinating life of George Forster
The second half of the 18th century was a boom time for travel books.
Putin and Erdogan are playing with fire in the Balkans and the Caucasus
Hinterlands: Journeys Through Europe’s Unfinished Frontiers Profile, pp.288, 22 There are 34 disputed territories in and around Europe. In some cases, two or more nations claim the same patch of land. In others, separatist governments demand their own sovereignty. Many of these disputes have a quaint, eccentric interest: Italy and France struggling over the summit of Mont Blanc; or Britain, Ireland, Denmark and Iceland arguing over the barren islet of Rockall.
The great imagination of John Vanbrugh
It’s one of the great enigmas of architectural history. On Christmas Day 1699 John Vanbrugh wrote a long, gossipy letter to the Duke of Manchester. He described how he had spent the summer touring country houses, including ‘four or five days’ at Chatsworth, where he showed the Duke of Devonshire his designs for a house. The house was being built for the Earl of Carlisle, who wanted a new seat on his estate in North Yorkshire.
The allure of Catholic conversion
Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century, Melanie McDonagh, Yale University Press, £25 In Siegfried Sassoon’s ‘Christ and the Soldier’, an honest Tommy passes by a stone roadside cross somewhere on the Western Front.
Éric Rohmer's Christmas classic for adults
On the lists of Christmas classics that appear around this time of year, one film is always missing. My Night at Maud’s (1969) is the third work by the French director Éric Rohmer, and his first masterpiece. It tells the story of Jean-Louis, a 34-year-old engineer living alone in the hills above Clermont-Ferrand, during the vacant days of the winter break.
Arvo Pärt's path from profane to sacred
In 1964, the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt was suffering from a creative crisis. As he neared his 30th year, he began to doubt the value of his music. Since graduating from the Tallinn Conservatory, he had composed almost entirely in the 12-tone technique pioneered by Arnold Schönberg. This work was not only criticised by the Soviet authorities, but also trapped Pärt in a creative cul-de-sac of shrill dissonance and derivative experimentalism.
The dangerous charm of Peter Matthiessen
In 1951, the American author Peter Matthiessen moved to Paris. The scion of a wealthy Wasp family, he had studied at Yale and served in the navy, narrowly missing the second world war. He was then recruited to the CIA by James Jesus Angleton and sent to Paris, where he kept tabs on left-wing French intellectuals and expat Americans.
The myth of the solitary genius
The World Within: Why Artists, Writers and Thinkers Retreat, Guy Stagg, Scribner UK, 320pp, £20 In the summer of 1920, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was struggling. A year earlier, soon after returning home from the prisoner-of-war camp at Monte Cassino, this scion of one of Vienna’s wealthiest families had renounced his inheritance to become a schoolteacher.
Lawrence Durrell's lost Mediterranean
Larry: A New Biography of Lawrence Durrell, 1912–1947, Michael Haag, Profile Books, £25 Lawrence Durrell was nominated for the Nobel Prize 11 times, but never won. He came closest in 1962, the year it was awarded to John Steinbeck. ‘There aren’t any obvious candidates,’ committee member Henry Olsson wrote about the shortlist, which also featured Robert Graves and Karen Blixen. But Blixen died before the decision was made, and neither Graves’ poems nor novels were considered quite strong enough.
The World Within: Why Writers, Artists and Thinkers Retreat
Why do people withdraw from life, sometimes for long periods? Guy Stagg poses this question in relation to three of the most arresting figures of the 20th century: the transformative philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the remarkable poet and painter David Jones and the intellectual and mystic Simone Weil. In this intriguing book, Stagg identifies a number of reasons why these three figures pursued such radically different lives from most of us. Some of them are easy to understand.
Lone Wolf — the primal beast dividing modern Europe
In the winter of 2011, a wolf known as Slavc walked across Europe.
The Church of the Almost Believers
It’s a January evening in London, the temperature several degrees below freezing. Nine hundred people have gathered at a Westminster venue to hear Nick Cave in conversation with Tom Holland. The sell-out event is titled In Search of Wild Gods, a reference to the Australian musician’s latest album, of songs exploring the possibility of death, the divine and joyful rebirth.
The enduring lure of Atlantis
The Drowned Places: Diving in Search of Atlantis Chatto, pp.288, 20 When you picture Atlantis, what do you see? For most people, this mythic city is a classical arcadia sunk beneath the sea – fallen columns, shattered arches and perhaps even an aqueduct. But that is not the place described by Plato, the original source of the Atlantis myth. His version consists of an immense Atlantic island, many millennia older than the Egyptian and Babylonian empires.
Gatsby, still great at 100
In December 1940, a few days before Christmas, an obituary was printed in the New York Times with the headline: ‘Scott Fitzgerald, Author, Dies at 44.’ Though Fitzgerald was once considered the most exciting writer of his generation, the article described how ‘the promise of his brilliant career was never fulfilled,’ thanks to struggles with drink, depression and writers’ block.
The shards of heaven beneath our feet
Under a Metal Sky: A Journey Through Rocks Granta, pp.352, 20 In the early 20th century, the world went ‘raving mad on the subject of radium’, according to George Bernard Shaw. The newly discovered element was considered a miracle cure, used to treat about 150 medical complaints. And it was fashionable: society ladies drank afternoon tea in rooms filled with radium vapours, and cosmetic companies developed hair tonics, face lotions and anti-wrinkle creams, all claiming to contain the element.
How to think like Socrates
It’s one of the most well-known scenes in classical literature. Socrates has been found guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens and sentenced to death. Waiting in prison, he gathers several friends together and spends his last evening discussing whether the soul survives death. Then he drinks a draught of hemlock and by the following morning his own soul has departed. These events, described in Plato’s Phaedo, are so celebrated you would think there was little left to say.
The many passions of Ronald Blythe
Blythe Spirit: The Remarkable Life of Ronald Blythe John Murray, pp.400, 25 In Regency Britain, balls were often timed to coincide with full moons. Provided there was no cloud cover, moonlight made it safer to send out carriages. When Ronald Blythe accepted social invitations, he also took the lunar calendar into account – because a full moon was ‘best for a merry bicyclist wheeling homeward along unlit and potholed lanes’.
The magic of Thomas Mann
Germany six years after the First World War: Hitler was in prison following the Munich Beer Hall Putsch and the Reichsbank was issuing a new mark after hyperinflation destroyed the currency. Then, in November, the 49-year-old author Thomas Mann published The Magic Mountain.
A brief glimpse of secretive Myanmar
On the Shadow Tracks: A Journey Through Occupied Myanmar Allen Lane, pp.416, 25 Were trains to blame for the travel writing boom of the 1980s? When Paul Theroux’s The Great Railway Bazaar was published in 1975, it sold 1.5 million copies and launched a publishing phenomenon. At first, long-distance train journeys conjured all the romance of the golden age of travel: leather luggage, first-class compartments and the billowing steam from an antique engine.
The true valour needed to go on pilgrimage in Britain
On This Holy Island: A Modern Pilgrimage Across Britain Bloomsbury Continuum, pp.256, 20 Every summer solstice, thousands of people gather at Stonehenge to greet the longest day of the year. Judging from the druids in the crowd, you might think this tradition dates back to pagan Britain. In fact, it was started in 1974 by members of a hippy commune who decided to host a free festival among the stones.
To the City review — the powerful forces changing the face of Istanbul
On May 29 1453, Mehmet II conquered Constantinople.
Magnificent men in their automobiles: the 1907 Peking-Paris rally
The Race to the Future: The Adventure that Accelerated the Twentieth Century John Murray, pp.384, 20 The age of the car was a long time coming. The 19th century belonged to the train and, to a lesser extent, the bicycle. Several prototype automobiles were built during this period, but by the end of the century the technology was still primitive. In 1899 a handicap race held in France pitted walkers, riders, cyclists, motorcyclists and drivers against one another.
The Britannias — a nation seen through its islands
According to Ordnance Survey, there are some 5,000 islands scattered around the shores of Britain and Ireland.
What’s to become of Wales?
In recent years, more and more nature writers have begun to engage with the climate crisis. On the one hand, they want to raise awareness of the scale of the problem; on the other, they try to make more tangible those apocalyptic visions of the future. In Sarn Helen, Tom Bullough asks how the crisis is affecting Wales, while walking the old Roman road that linked the country’s south coast with the north.
The ghostly ruins of vanished Britain
Take a walk in the English countryside and you get the impression that little has changed. The churches and farmhouses, the hedgerows and footpaths – much of this has been preserved for centuries. However, as Matthew Green argues in Shadowlands, there is also a history of lost towns and abandoned villages hidden beneath the tranquil surface.
The Utopians by Anna Neima
Anna Neima Synopsis 'Neima’s book, impeccably researched and beautifully written, will be an inspiration for anyone looking to an alternative future today.' - Stella Tillyard, author of Aristocrats and The Great Level 'Deeply interesting and a pleasure to read, The Utopians illuminates the history of “social dreaming” at a time when it has never been more needed.' - Alison Light, author of A Radical Romance, Common People and Mrs.
The modern pantheon
In January 1780 the news reached London that Captain Cook had been killed and eaten in Hawaii. The story of his death was met with morbid fascination by the general public, inspiring paintings, poems and even a ballet. This ballet was so violent that one of the dancers accidentally stabbed another during the scene of the attack, yet it was also a fantastic success, touring the theatres of Europe and America.
World Mental Health Day
World Mental Health Day is on the 10th October every year. This year's theme set by the World Federation for Mental Health is 'Mental Health in an Unequal World'. Find out more here: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/campaigns/world-mental-health-day See below for a selection of books and resources on mental health. 10% off all selected items.
The difficulty of building heaven on Earth: why utopias usually fail
The years after the first world war were a boom time for utopian communities. As the survivors of the conflict began to recover, many were drawn towards experimental ways of living. Anna Neima looks at six of these communities, asking what brought them together, what kept them going and what legacy, if any, they left behind. In doing so, she offers an original perspective on the entire period and a new way of navigating its artistic and ideological upheaval.
Pilgrimage is beginning to resemble any other kind of holiday
St Winefride’s Well, Holywell, Wales claims to be the oldest continually visited pilgrimage site in Britain. Credit: Alamy Hidden away in the Old City of Jerusalem is a tattoo parlour which has been serving pilgrims for the past 700 years. The Razzouk family parlour near the Jaffa Gate claims to have been inking crosses into travellers’ skins since the 1300s.
Lilian Pizzichini - To Be a Pilgrim
Part-travel book, part-confessional, Guy Stagg’s debut has earned him a slot on Radio 4 and a Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award (2016). Philip Hoare describes it as ‘a timely antidote to our disconnected times’, which hits the nail on the head. Disconnection lies at the heart of Stagg’s book. It is what motivated him to walk 5,500 kilometres on foot from Canterbury to Jerusalem through ten countries, a pilgrimage lasting ten months, and to write about his trip.
Folio Prize
It is with great pleasure that we present the finalists for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2019. One of the most varied and wide-ranging literary awards – and the only UK prize open to any work of literature, regardless of form – this year’s eight-strong shortlist is replete with talent from around the world.
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