Why I write --
The spike --
A hanging --
Shooting an elephant --
Bookshop memories --
Marrakech --
Charles Dickens --
Boys' weeklies --
Inside the whale --
My country right or left --
The lion and the unicorn --
Wells, Hitler and the world state --
The art of Donald McGill --
Rudyard Kipling --
Looking back on the Spanish War --
W.B. Yeats --
Poetry and the microphone --
Benefit of clergy: some notes on Salvador Dali --
Raffles and Miss Blandish --
Arthur Koestler --
Antisemitism in Britain --
In defence of P.G. Wodehouse --
Notes on Nationalism --
Good bad books --
The sporting spirit --
Nonsense poetry --
The prevention of literature --
Books v. cigarettes --
Decline of the English murder --
Politics and the English language --
Some thoughts on the common toad --
A good word for the Vicar of Bray --
Confessions of a book reviewer --
Politics vs literature: an examination of Gulliver's travels --
How the poor die --
Riding down from Bangor --
Lear, Tolstoy and the fool --
Such, such were the joys --
Writers and Leviathan --
Reflections on Gandhi.