England
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The Most English Man in the World February 25, 2025
I went to England for the first time last week, and in the run-up to the trip, it became very clear that I am one of those Americans.Whenever anyone suggested doing something nice in London—a “roast”? a trip to Piccadilly?—I tortured them with my Coc...
How the ‘Manosphere’ Became Mainstream Entertainment February 24, 2025
Whenever Bill Belichick, the 72-year-old former head coach of the New England Patriots, goes out in public with his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, who is exactly one-third his age, they tend to draw attention. It was no different at the 2025 N.F.L. Honor...
The Sexual Renaissance February 12, 2025
A new era dawns?There’s an old New England ballad called “The New Bundling Song,” about the custom of “bundling” a young couple side-by-side in bed before marriage. The aim was to afford potential spouses a night together that would test their compat...
WH Auden’s Visions of England September 12, 2024
Edward Mendelson, WH Auden’s literary executor and editor, has called Nicholas Jenkins’s The Island “a Copernican revolution” in studies of the great poet. It’s a big claim, and for the first few dozen pages it looks as though it might be an exaggera...
Philosophy of the People September 11, 2024
‘As they say that Helen of Argos had that universal beauty that every body felt related to her, so Plato seems to a reader in New England an American genius. His broad humanity transcends all sectional lines.’– from ‘Plato; or, the Philosopher’; Repr...
An English Town Abandons the Apostrophe May 14, 2024
To soothe my teetering mental health, I've abandoned British news. Nigerian news may not provide what one expects from news—the flooding in Jigawa won't tickle my British toes—but neither is Nigerian news a suicide note revealed in nightly instalment...
Fun Is Back May 10, 2024
On Sunday, A-listers from Kim Kardashian to Ben Affleck brutally mocked former NFL quarterback Tom Brady (and each other) for three hours, live on Netflix.The Roast of Tom Brady was scorched earth. Tony Hinchcliffe joked about cotton picking and said...
Being Green May 07, 2024
Back when I only visited the countryside occasionally, I suffered from what botanists call “plant blindness,” described by Zoë Schlanger in her entertaining new book, The Light Eaters, as “the tendency to view plant life as an indistinguishable mass,...
