September 24 was National Punctuation Day, in honor of which this month’s word refers to a very strange and particular sort of qu...

        I inherited from the respectable middle-class packrats among my ancestors a 10 volume set of Chambers’s Encyclopaedia: A Dictiona...

        Over the years I have featured the work of many “problematic” creators, from Nazi-sympathizing artists to sexist poets , but the...

        Here’s another wood block print I saw in a museum this summer.  This is “Dancing Stallion” by Nakayama Tadashi (Japan, 1927-2014)...

        Emily Dickinson (USA, 1830-1886) is an enigmatic poet, whose voice is unlike any other.  Although it’s clear that her imagination i...

        In a bit of bonus Word of the Month, the ornamental textile design called paisley uses the Persian boteh , that curved teardrop ...

        A month ago children’s author and professor of literature Katherine Rundell released a book entitled Why You Should Read Children...

        This summer we visited quite a few museums, including Tate Modern in London.  There weren’t many block prints on display there - ...

        Nowadays we tend to think of words for diseases as being quite clinical and precise, but before medical science had come that far...