Todd McEwen’s novels include ‘Who Sleeps With Katz’ and ‘The Five Simple Machines’ (both published by CBeditions).

All at sea – the anxious mariners of Marsden Hartley

A briny, brawny late work by Maine’s favourite modernist finds strength in stoic silence

8 Jan 2024

Weed, all about it

Todd McEwen leafs through a history of the underground pot-culture press

10 Aug 2023
The Peanuts gang, created by Charles M. Schulz.

How the Peanuts cartoons captured the soul of post-war America

On the centenary of Charles M. Schulz’s birth, the cartoonist’s greatest creation still sums up the hopes and fears of the nuclear age

24 Oct 2022

The Scottish artist who liked to be beside the seaside

The seaside scenes of Willie Rodger aren’t necessarily a sunny affair, but they are always full of life

20 May 2022
Detail of a print depicting a raven by John James Audubon.

Lord of the wings – how Audubon’s career got off to a flying start

James John Audubon’s illustrations of birds endure to this day, even if many of the species he depicted didn’t make it

1 Apr 2022
Shangri-La Express

The adventures of Reinhard Behrens and his rusty toy submarine

The painter has created a fictitious world called Naboland which he explores with the help of a rusty submersible

8 Oct 2021
Woman working in an office in the United States, c. 1921.

Keys to success: how typewriters transformed the world of work

Typewriters may be museum pieces now, but they created office jobs for women and by doing so changed the 20th century

28 Jul 2021
Left: ‘Black Mask’, vol. 12, no. 1, September 1929, contains the first part (of five) of ‘The Maltese Falcon’ by Dashiell Hammett; right: ‘Harper’s Bazaar’, vol. 77, no. 3, March 1943, featuring Lauren Bacall on the cover.

The magazines that made America

The pages of US periodicals trumpet a country making it up as it went along, covering everything from prohibition to pulp fiction

15 Apr 2021

Fran Lebowitz loves New York more than you do

The city’s most devoted citizen explains urban life to Martin Scorsese

26 Jan 2021