Author Archives: Horatio

Budding in Darkness

Essay about owls in June-July issue of The London Magazine.

The Heritage of Humanism and Enlightenment in Exile Literature

There’s a conference with this title at St Hugh’s College Oxford, between March 24th – 25th, at which I’ll be talking about Stefan Zweig and Erasmus.

The Thames by Night

‘The Thames by Night‘ is an essay about my grandparents, Jack and Kippe Morpurgo, published in the January / February 2022 issue of the PN Review.

7.5 Km3

7.5 Km3 is an essay published in the February / March issue of the London Magazine. It’s about the end of lockdown, the British government’s plan to build a floating wall down the middle of the Channel and the single day, in October 2020, when a record-breaking seven and a half cubic kilometres of rainwater […]

Afterwardsness

In June 2021, an open letter was published asking for a blue plaque to commemorate Stefan Zweig’s residence in central London from 1933-39. ‘Afterwardsness: On Being European Anyway’ is a collection of essays which seeks to emulate Zweig’s Erasmian ideal. A copy has been sent to anyone who signed the open letter and asked to […]

XR Meta Incognita

An article for the London Magazine about Frobisher’s ore, deforestation in Elizabethan England and why they both matter more than ever as COP26 gets underway in Glasgow.

Paris, London and Friendship

You can read here an essay in the current (August – September 2021) issue of The London Magazine. It is briefly summarised below. Molière Reading Tartuffe at Ninon de Lenclos, painted in 1802 by Nicolas Monsiau, hangs in the library of the Comédie-Française, France’s national theatre. Tartuffe scandalised the pious on its first appearance, prompting […]

Open letter to English Heritage about a blue plaque for Stefan Zweig

In 2018, the PN Review published ‘Unseasonably Speaking’, an essay in which I made the case for re-opening a discussion about how Stefan Zweig’s time in London should be commemorated. Three Monkeys Online has now posted that piece. The 2021 June – July issue of the PN Review carried an open letter to English Heritage […]

Analog Sea and the Pixelated Madness

An account of reading Jonathan Simons’ sui generis offline journal, Analog Sea, during Donald Trump’s attempted putsch. In the April / May issue of PN Review.

The Exiled Voices Teach

My review of the book version (Fuel, 2020) of Patrick Keiller’s acclaimed film, London (1994), in the April / May edition of The London Magazine.