Guide
About philosophy (broadly)
How to Believe in Nothing (aphorisms about philosophy)
How to Believe in Nothing (Part 2) (aphorisms about philosophy)
The Infinity of Lists (about making lists)
No Surprises (about habituation)
On Being Problematic (about art and prejudice)
Three Oddities (about understanding)
Two Lawyers Walk into a Bar (about pessimism)
About poets and poetry
Dropped without Joy (about the poetry of R. S. Thomas)
Everything Changes but the Avant-Garde (aphorisms about the avant-garde)
The Fall of Aphrodite Street (about Les Murray’s ‘Aphrodite Street’)
Good Causes Don’t Make Good Poems (on protest poetry)
Lost Amphibia’s Emperies (on preciosity in poetry)
Memento Mori (about Philip Larkin’s ‘Aubade’)
No Time to Spare (about the poetry of Samuel Menashe)
There I Go Again (about the poetry of Stevie Smith)
This Craft of Verse (aphorisms about poetry)
About my ‘life’ in Italy
Everybody Comes to Rick’s (about being an immigrant in Italy)
The Italian Dream (about Italian decline)
That Joke isn’t Funny Anymore (about English teaching in Italy)
The Virus and its Precursors (about the pandemic in Italy)
Why Italy Doesn’t Work (about Italian bureaucracy)
You Are Now Under Exam Conditions (about English exams in Italy)
About language
The Etymological Fallacy (on spurious etymology)
Politics and the English Language (on George Orwell and prescriptivism)
About political subjects
The Descendants (about genealogy)
The Old Gods (about progress)
Reflections on the Ick (about the death penalty)
Reflections on the Revolution in Reflection (about tech)
The Toad ‘Work’ (about work and money)
Reviews and retrospectives
Blessed are the Cheesemakers (on Monty Python’s Life of Brian)
The Future of Posterity (on rereading Dracula)
In Memory of Tom Stoppard (on the plays of Tom Stoppard)
In Praise of Gore Vidal (on United States by Gore Vidal)
It’s Groundhog Day! (on Groundhog Day)
Reach for the Ground (on Low Life by Jeffrey Bernard)
Poems and translations
Excuses, Excuses (published in Poems for Persons of Interest)
The Rats in the Marina after Storms (translation from the Italian of Emilia Leone)
Resolutions (translation from the Italian of Sofia Riva)
Film diary, or capsule reviews
12 Years a Slave • 22 July • Alien • All of Us Strangers • Amour • Annie Hall • Apocalypse Now • The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans • Batman Begins • Berberian Sound Studio • Blade Runner • Cape Fear • A Clockwork Orange • Eyes Without a Face • Halloween • Inglourious Basterds • Inside Out • The Lady from Shanghai • Mulholland Drive • Only Lovers Left Alive • The Pianist • The Room • The Social Network • Spartacus • Spotlight • Unforgiven • White Right: Meeting the Enemy