Benjamin Riley

2 months ago | wsj.com | Benjamin Riley

Ezra Pound described the scientist turned art collector Albert Barnes (1872-1951) as “at war with mankind.” After making a fortune in pharmaceuticals, Barnes developed eccentric ideas about the nature of fine art, which led to a life of conflict with establishment figures as he built a semipublic collection, the Barnes Foundation.

Aug 9, 2024 | wsj.com | Benjamin Riley

To the poet Shelley, “Hell is a city much like London— / a populous and smoky city.” To the late-Victorian industrialist and statesman Joseph Chamberlain, London was the proud “clearing-house of the world.” Both were referring to the city’s commercial character, though Shelley the Romantic and Chamberlain the manufacturer had very different views of its merit.

Jun 14, 2024 | newcriterion.com | James Panero |Gary Saul Morson |Benjamin Riley |Victor Davis Hanson

Recent stories of note: “Dreamers and Plagiarists”Jacob Howland, TabletPick your poison: a world in which each person believes that he alone understands things for what they are, or one in which everybody has succumbed to oceanic feeling at the cost of individuality and ambition? These prophetic possibilities are presented by Fyodor Dostoevsky and the Polish author Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz respectively.

Jun 7, 2024 | newcriterion.com | Benjamin Riley |Gary Saul Morson |James Panero |Victor Davis Hanson

“‘D-Day: Freedom from Above’ Review: Soldiers’ Airborne Stories”Mark Yost, The Wall Street JournalOf the 16.4 million Americans who fought in World War II, only about a hundred thousand remain with us. The poignancy of this fact is brought into sharper relief on such occasions as yesterday, the eightieth anniversary of the D-Day landings, and by exhibitions such as the National Museum of the U.S. Army’s “D-Day: Freedom from Above,” reviewed here by The Wall Street Journal’s Mark Yost.

Apr 5, 2024 | wsj.com | Benjamin Riley

“Oh! Who can ever be tired of Bath?” Catherine Morland asks in Jane Austen’s “Northanger Abbey” (1817). And who indeed could ever be tired of the Royal Crescent (completed 1775), John Wood the Younger’s stately composition of attached townhouses that towers over the small, tidy city in the west of England?