Oliver Nicholson

There is a Gresham’s Law in music; bad tunes drive out good. On Sunday you hear a competent choir render a subtle and melodious anthem by Herbert Howells. You are then obliged to join in a repetitive praise chorus of the sort whose words and tune suggest that the righteous are those who have enjoyed … Read more

The late summer evenings take my mind back thirty years to a leafy lane on the Devon-Dorset border, the western edge of the countryside familiar to readers of Thomas Hardy’s novels. We had spent the day otter-hunting, the finest of all forms of venery, requiring intimate understanding of the habits of the otter, but offering … Read more

You can find the best-looking man in Minnesota, my female colleagues tell me, at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He is well over six feet tall, poses naked, and has a relaxed, arrogant look about him—there’s that jutty chin that women find irresistible. I am led to believe (by the same authorities) that the view … Read more

Why do people admire Napoleon? I don’t mean the French—they have reasons of their own for boosting Bonaparte, such as a dearth of more recent political heroes. But what inspires so many ordinary Anglophones in their cloying fascination for the great dictator? It’s not just the sticky puff-pastries and the Napoleon brandy (but what has … Read more

The other day a student asked me to name my favorite building. I had no hesitation. “Exeter Cathedral,” I said. There is plenty of magnificence: creamy, glowing stone, the longest medieval Gothic vault in England (possibly in the world), a forest of columns branching upward. But this place also has an unintimidating intimacy; while it … Read more

I have never been a big fan of Chenin Blanc. If grapes were people, this variety would be your alcoholic uncle, all hail-fellow-well-met as he comes through the door, but a bit bland, short on attention span and interesting conversation, and liable to leave behind him a sensation somewhat different from the initial affable salute. … Read more

Greeks and Romans thought the world looked like a fried egg. There was land in the middle, wholly surrounded by Ocean, with a sea (appropriately called the Mediterranean) bisecting the land. Even in the early Middle Ages, fishermen in what is now Normandy are said to have heard at dead of night the boats putting … Read more

I have always warmed to authors who thank their spouses for preparing their index. Such marital harmony, such mutual society, help and comfort. You can imagine their kitchen: she sitting at the table rummaging through proofs and index cards, he standing at the stove turning Seville oranges into coarse-cut marmalade. It is surely gracious also … Read more

The saints of February are a rum lot. The larger their reputation, the less can be said for certain about their lives and activities—and vice versa. The blameless virgin Saint Scholastica, twin sister of Saint Benedict, is relatively well documented—for someone who lived fifteen hundred years ago. But she is remembered only for the name … Read more

Who now reads Charles Morgan? Some years ago there was a revival of his novel The Gunroom, which proved to anyone who was interested that the middle one of Churchill’s three Traditions of the Royal Navy (Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash) was a living reality for young officers of the Edwardian Era. Morgan’s masterpiece is … Read more