Before Uncle David’s funeral out at Springvale more than a decade ago, I had no idea that his only daughter, my cousin Janet, who was the youngest of our late mother’s bridesmaids, and in later life nobly accepted the charge and responsibility …

I have a weakness for the heroic couplet, and anything comical. Here, for example, is Alexander Pope on coffee, in that part of “The Rape of the Lock” where the Baron gets a new idea about how to gain access to Belinda’s follicles. For lo! t…

This week we asked our friend Angus Trumble to give us the benefit of his wisdom—and received an embarras de richesses. Thanks to all for your questions and to Angus for his answers; there was none we could bear to cut. By day Angus is the senior cur…

The lost language of Italian parasols and the men who made them. Last month, on a visit to Piedmont in northern Italy, I chanced upon a small museum in the hill town of Gignese that is devoted to the local craft of umbrella-making. At first, I wo…

This is the second installment of Trumble's culture diary. Click here to read part 1. DAY FOUR 5:30 A.M. I have been mining the poet, critic, journalist, playwright, sometime minor colonial official Richard Henry Horne (1802–1884). He was one o…

DAY ONE 4:45 A.M. Reviewing two new books about Caravaggio—books that are about as different from each other as it is possible to be: Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, by Andrew Graham-Dixon, and The Moment of Caravaggio, a series of illustr…