Twice a week in the early 1630s, a group of worshippers would remain behind after Evensong for a 'private Musick meeting' in Salisbury Cathedral. A regular member of the group was the poet George ...

In his superb American Pastoral, Philip Roth displayed signs of wanting to examine his kind of people in greater philosophic depth: Swede Lermontov, a Newark Jew who has moved to the mink-and-manure ...

God help the hangers-on, the small fry who desperately dart and flash amidst the barracudas and the killer whales. Life is hard at that level, even if you look like a big fish to the crustaceans on ...