BY MAX WALLER If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” – Tancredi Pleasantly surprised by the quality of the new television series The Leopard (Netflix), which has had to contend with comparisons to the aristocratic perfection of the original Visconti movie starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Claudia Cardinale, I am currently musing on 19th-century Italy—specifically the Risorgimento movement … Continue reading Risorgimento
BY MAX WALLER Although I rarely frequent them anymore, there are few greater luxuries, when in a once-major city like London, than slipping into a private club and ducking out of the rat (not Ratty!) race for a few hours. For me, it feels like having all the stress of the city shut out while I compose myself and centre myself on an island of … Continue reading The Willows
BY MAX WALLER Dear Ebenezer, I am nine years old and have no friends here. Usher Stokes suggested I keep myself busy during the holidays by learning to write letters. Since I have no one to write to, I am writing to you, hoping you might have far more friends than I do. Though now that I think of it, there are friends of a … Continue reading The Scrooge Letters: Part One
BY MAX WALLER I’ve pretty much given up on the idea of traditional Christianity making a comeback in England—not that I have any real grounds to call for its return, given that my connection to the faith has been limited mostly to singing hymns in school assemblies and later falling in love with Western sacred music dedicated to praising God, such as Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and … Continue reading Nation of Aslan
BY MAX WALLER After the never-ending demonisation and disregard of the working class by the political class ever since the death of Britpop around 1997, it occurs to me that in Starmer’s Soviet Britain, where he’s promised (paraphrasing ‘New Labour’s’ slogan) that ‘things will only get worse’ and not better, the timing of the ten Oasis concerts spread across London, Manchester, Scotland, and Ireland for … Continue reading Don’t Look Back In Anger
BY MAX WALLER I‘m told that if you stand outside the grounds of Gloucester Cathedral late at night and shut your eyes, you may just hear, above the occasional car horn blast and drunk mutant hollering, the faint sound of ghostly music from centuries past hanging in the air, like phantom notes that never die, carried on the sighs of the dead. The vibrations of … Continue reading The Music Of Ghosts
BY MAX WALLER My immediate first impression after watching Yorgos Lanthimos’ ‘Poor Things’ (2024) was that it is essentially an expensive, surreal and hyper-expressionist Hammer horror-style movie for the 21st century with a considerable number of Tinto Brass-like sex scenes thrown in for good measure. Whatever aspirations it has to say something meaningful I’m not so sure it succeeds but it certainly attempts to have … Continue reading The Emancipation Of Bella Baxter
