Though overshadowed by the more theatrical T.E. Lawrence, Sir Mark Sykes was still by all accounts a remarkable man, and should be known for his contribution to Pan-Arabist vexillology. read more

It’s not surprising that Robert Gwelo Goodman — one of my favourite South African artists — lived in a unique dwelling nestled in the nape of Table Mountain. read more

Daniel O’Connell was a remarkable man by any stretch of the imagination. Among his many achievements, however, was in London in 1825 founding the National Bank of Ireland. read more

What are we to make of the growing movement against the name ‘Czech Republic’? read more

EVERYONE was at the Opera last night. It was for the final performance of a magnificent production of Puccini’s Il trittico, like a three-course meal with a delicious pudding. read more

Modernists have had Christchurch, NZ in their sights since the devastating earthquake, but local architectural designer & engineer James Carr has come up with a proposal to build a gothic central library on the city’s Cathedral Square. read more

The Lib Dems are justifiably an unpopular lot, but their obvious defects aside one can find time to love a bare few of their number. read more

The Church of St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol was famously described by Elizabeth Tudor as ‘the fairest, goodliest, and most famous parish church in England’.

Lunching in Wexford town, I came across a copy of the Feudal Times & Reactionary Herald which included a thoughtful editorial regarding the recent Rhodes controversy in Oxford. read more

“Something I constantly notice is that unembarrassed joy has become rarer,” wrote Cardinal Ratzinger in 1997. “Joy today is increasingly saddled with moral and ideological burdens, so to speak.” read more

Dan McCarthy on Russell Kirk; thirteenth-century polymath Bishop Grosseteste; what an Oxfordshire church has in common with St Mark’s in Venice. read more

Rose and Molly are two of my favourite people in the entire universe, and when they announced they were racing a tandem across the Cape Peninsula to raise money for the men’s charity Movember, how could one fail to get behind such an effort? read more

The university founded at Leiden by William the Silent has had strong links with South Africa from the earliest days. read more

The theatre of disfunctional families never hugely appealed to me but over a few bottles of Erdinger in Kennington t’other night a friend dropped word of ‘Five Finger Exercise’ at the Print Room in Notting Hill (the old Coronet) and I thought I’d give it a go. read more

This Cape Town house was built in 1751 for Hermanus Smuts who sold it on to Johan Jacobus Graaff, the woodworker who collaborated with South Africa’s greatest architectural duo, the sculptor Anton Anreith and the architect Louis Michel Thibault. read more

The Leipzig Opera House is the swansong of Socialist Classicism as an architectural style. The 1954 plans had to be toned down mid-construction, with some of the sculptural adornment simplified, as the official aesthetics of the German Democratic Republic shifted towards a more aggressive modernism. read more

Margaret Beaufort, one of the greatest women England ever produced; Jeanne d’Arc on the Upper West Side; and the neglect Irish writer George Russell (‘Æ’). read more

The façade is a little clunky but flowers soften this stern civic edifice with a bit of welcome frivolity. read more

Among Daniel Mitsui’s latest works is a Chinese ink drawing on a Catholic theme. read more

My old desk when I was working at The New Criterion in New York. read more

German typography and print design in the 1950s combined elegance and simplicity. read more

As today is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, here is the documentary we made regarding the Order of Malta’s annual pilgrimage to Lourdes each May. read more

click to view

A man festively attired in a Tweede Nuwejaar outfit in patriotic colours stands in front of a side wall in Cape Town urging voters to vote ‘No’ in the 1960 republic referendum. read more

It is often said that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter — but what inspires the man who refuses to fight? Is he a coward? A man of conscience? Or a mere contrarian who goes too far? read more

Staatspresident Jacobus Johannes Fouché giving the staatsrede from the throne of the Senate within the Houses of Parliament in Cape Town. read more

If you don’t think you’ve been getting enough Cusack lately, then you will probably welcome my new blog, Daily Cusack. read more

Calling in at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican the other day, I was confronted with an interwar mappa mundi that displayed some difficulties of Latin toponymy. read more

Sipping a postprandial Coke last week while flipping through the Irish Times, my wandering eye was drawn towards that newspaper’s report on the Madrid congress of the European People’s Party. read more

“I found many of my all-white students at the University of Cape Town tediously dogmatic in their supposed progressiveness,” writes Paul Moorcraft. But at Stellenbosch the students were “much more open-minded.” read more

Between the vernal equinox and its autumnal confrère tomorrow there has been perhaps an excess of fevered activity. read more

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, granted an interview to Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS) in St Petersburg this summer, covering (among other issues) the balance of power, independence and sovereignty in Europe, and relations with the United States. read more

As my sister was educated (or something to that effect) by Ursulines, a recent addition to Canada’s Public Register of Arms, Flags, and Badges caught my attention. read more

“The city’s administrative and electoral units were its parishes, and the tallest buildings were all church towers,” writes historian Jeffrey Needell. “The day of the colonial port began with the cannon shot announcing the beginning of harbour commerce, at half past five.” read more

The Netherlands’ Royal Academy of Fine Arts has existed since 1682, but there’s quite a contrast between the temple they built in the early nineteenth century and its Bauhaus replacement from the twentieth. read more

Dr Hans Fransen, the leading authority on Cape Dutch architecture, intends to shed new light on the Cape Baroque style through an examination of the work of the sculptor Anton Anreith. read more

The ‘See Your City’ ad campaign evokes old-school travel posters of the 1920s & 30s. read more

In this commonwealth of knowledge, it is necessary to share out our sources of insight and wisdom. Here are just a few sites (“blogs”, even) that readers of this little corner of the web ought to take notes of. read more

A launch party at Ralph Lauren, New Bond Street, for Jack Carlson’s new book Rowing Blazers. read more

Looking back at the first edition of Il Foglio, it’s interesting how the design so obviously takes its inspiration from that of the Wall Street Journal. read more

In New York, good things are only allowed to last a little while: eventually they must all be destroyed. The latest to add to the pile is the Rizzolli shop on West 57th. read more

As a map-lover it’s a fine thing that I spend half my life in South Kensington where you’ll find two of the best antiquarian map merchants around. read more

The French tricolour is one of the most influential flags in history, and inspired two flags in Canada and South Africa. read more

Magyarophiles will be pleased to learn that L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, will begin appearing in Hungarian. read more

“The enormous church of S. Maria Maggiore stands on one of Rome’s seven famous hills,” writes Steen Eiler Rasmussen. read more

My favourite advertising installation is the massive logotype for the world’s greatest newspaper which spans the tracks at the Frankfurter Hauptbahnhof. read more

Sharon Jennings’ play explores the most famous love story of all time from the perspective of Rosaline, the niece of Capulet mentioned yet never seen in Shakespeare’s play. read more

As the light of summer dies and the cold grey monotone of winter approaches, here are a few photos from the past month or two. click to view

Wren’s classical masterpiece transformed into an absurd gothic creature. read more

‘Three Annulets Or: the van Riebeeck arms and their South African legacy’ at the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society on 17 September 2013. read more

Given the urgent situation, please see the following from the Fathers of the London Oratory. read more

The most recent series of the ITV detective drama “Foyle’s War”, though set in London, was filmed entirely in Dublin. read more

The New York Times Company, owners of the International Herald-Tribune, announced they are going to kill off the 126-year-old newspaper. read more