Whether it’s a noun, plus what to read if you can’t.

International hero Victor Brombert left us last month. We couldn’t spare him.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a lonely girl in possession of a library card must be in want of a twin. The child who spends a lot of time in books also spends a lot of time thinking about the lost or secret twin she must have – “must have” meaning surely has, but “must have” in the sense of “needs,” also – that mirror child who loves her, IS her, holds her hand always.

I found it while researching a murder (…this is a sentence I have more frequent use for than most), the true story of a neighborhood legend from my childhood. I grew up in a leafy, …

The bond between sovereign and subjects is a strange and mostly unknowable thing. A nation’s life becomes a person’s, and then the string must break. Sam Knight on Operation London Bridge

Monarchies want abolishing, …

Once upon a time, in the world before Tomato Nation, I worked in an antiquarian bookshop in Chelsea. I made seven dollars an hour. I learned how to “spine up” a shelf, tweaking the books …

Hello. It feels…quaint, nearly, doesn’t it, this thing we do each year together?

Sarahs Bunting past.

I was 28, no greys. I had two
cats, one grey. I lived, for a moment, in a loft in Toronto I was subletting
from a college friend. The cats have gone. They are also …

Last of a dying breed.

Years ago, my parents won a day trip in some sort of silent auction, a boat trip that would take us all around the island of Manhattan.