Robert Messenger

The Swedish Academy took the year off. Robert Messenger explains why we should be glad.

There is a famous World War I poem by Siegfried Sassoon called “Everybody Sang!

The cocktail is a lovely simple thing: a mixture of spirits and flavorings that whets the appetite, pleases the eye, and stimulates the mind. It is one of our conspicuous contributions to cultured living, up there with the Great American Songbook and the tuxedo. Yet, like almost everything else to…

I swam through the most beautiful coral reef recently: large quantities of vibrant elkhorn coral just a few feet below the water's surface. When healthy, coral supports a vast network of underwater life, and the reef was full of Sergeant Majors, Butterflyfish, Fairy Basslets, Gobys, Trunkfish,…

About a year ago, I bought a broken edition of the works of Joseph Conrad on eBay. It was quite cheap even though it was missing more volumes than the seller thought. The "Medallion Edition" is widely stated to be 20 volumes, a reprint of the collected edition that Conrad himself corrected for…

There are parts of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that seem to me like home. So it was with some trepidation that I wandered in to see the recent reinstallation of the 19th- and 20th-century painting galleries. I'm constitutionally opposed to change, and rehangings are generally done for the worst…

Last weekend, I happened on a recording of the Scottish traditional "The Bonnie Lass of Fyvie" played by the Pipes and Drums of the 48th Highland regiment. It's a catchy tune and, though I couldn't recall the last time I'd heard it, the words of the chorus popped into my head--thanks undoubtedly to…

The Greatest Battle

I have a thing for obituaries. At my age, it's not yet a matter of keeping score against my contemporaries. It's more a taste for the appreciative and anecdotal. Newspapers don't present much sweetness or humor, even on the review and feature pages. The obit, though, remains a sort of sociocultural…

Picasso and American Art

The Somme

Seize the Fire