Dear Diary: Toru Dutt Wrote Poetry in English and French Before She Was Twenty-One and Meadows Taylor Wrote a Thriller in 1839, So the Nineteenth Century Was Busier Than My Inbox

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Tinsel on two writers of British India, a young poet from Calcutta and an Englishman who knew the country, and why a reading list should include voices that argue with each other Saturday 10 October, 1.15pm, a table in a library reading room under a lamp with a green shade, two pencils, a library slip … Read more

Dear Diary: The Budget Rumour Mill Mentions Capital Gains, a Lower Mansion Tax Threshold and Student Loans, and Not One Rumour Is Confirmed, So Naturally I Have Read All of Them

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Tinsel on the speculation list in a consumer guide, what is a proposal and what is a decision, a first-time buyer scheme and why a rumour is the cheapest thing in Westminster Saturday 10 October, 3.45pm, a sofa with a blanket, a plate of toast that has become less a snack than a gesture and … Read more

Dear Diary: Navi Pillay Won the Nobel Peace Prize, a South African Jurist of Indian Tamil Origin Joked About Sharing It With Trump and I Spent the Evening Wondering What Her Victorian Ancestors Would Make of It

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Tinsel on a prize for international law, a diaspora story that crosses the Indian Ocean and the way a nineteenth-century migration can turn up in a twenty-first-century headline Saturday 10 October, 6.15pm, a kitchen with the radio on low, a pan of lentils that needs stirring and a notebook in which I have written the … Read more

Dear Diary: John Healey Will Deliver the Autumn Budget on Wednesday 28 October and the Prime Minister Has Already Ruled Out Three Big Taxes, Which Leaves Only About Four Hundred Others

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Tinsel on the earliest autumn budget since 2021, a newly appointed Chancellor, a pledge on income tax, National Insurance and VAT and the national sport of guessing what happens next Saturday 10 October, 7.30am, a breakfast table covered in last week’s newspapers, a boiled egg that has achieved its ambition and a calendar on which … Read more

Dear Diary: India’s 2026 State Elections Changed Hands in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, and a Reader of Victorian Novels Tries to Follow It on a Map Without Losing Her Tea

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Tinsel on five assembly elections held in April, who held office before, who holds it now and the reason the nineteenth century keeps arriving in the twenty-first Saturday 10 October, 10.00am, an armchair with a lamp, an atlas that is older than the sofa and a mug of strong tea beside a notebook headed INDIA … Read more

Remnants of an Army

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A painting of one exhausted man on a dying horse, a Kipling poem about the Afghan plains, and a joke about a president who wants his air base back Wednesday, Looking at a Reproduction I keep a pinboard of paintings I wish I had made. This week I added a new one, a postcard my … Read more

The Member for India

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In 1892 a Parsi from Bombay was elected to the British Parliament by a handful of votes, and his book about where India’s money went reads strangely beside a headline about oil Friday, a Photograph on the Easel I do something when I am between commissions. I find an old photograph of someone I have … Read more

Everyone Who Could Afford It Went Up the Mountain

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Kipling’s first book is about the hill town where British India hid from the heat, and I listened to it in a studio with a broken swamp cooler and a joke about Arizona Tuesday, the Studio, Ninety-Six Degrees The swamp cooler died on Sunday. In Salt Lake City in a hot October that is a … Read more