Richard Farr

Jan 14, 2025 | 3quarksdaily.com | Richard Farr

After I moved from the UK to the US it took me only a couple of years to cede to my friends' pleas and start driving on the right. When in Rome, and all that. But I still like to irritate Americans by maintaining that we Brits are better at this essential mechanical skill. I mean, when we drive, we drive . Or, OK, we drive while texting, shaving, putting on makeup, or having sex.

Nov 21, 2024 | 3quarksdaily.com | Richard Farr

The tree was immense even by local standards: a western red cedar that might have been a thousand years old. A botanist would want to measure it; I only wanted to touch its wrinkled face, or kneel among the roots and capture a dramatic snapshot looking up along the trunk. But it was fifty paces away and I couldn't get there. We were 300 miles northwest of Vancouver, as the raven flies, on one of the countless islands of the Great Bear Rainforest.

Oct 21, 2024 | 3quarksdaily.com | Richard Farr

For several weeks I've had an article by the excellent Rick Perlstein squatting unread in my Ought-To-Read list. The title is Everything You Wanted to Know About World War III but Were Afraid to Ask . I am afraid to ask: although I ought to want to know, right now I don't.

Sep 23, 2024 | 3quarksdaily.com | Richard Farr

Even if you are sympathetic to Marx - even if, at any rate, you see him not as an ogre but as an original thinker worth taking seriously - you might be forgiven for feeling that the sign at the East entrance to Highgate Cemetery reflects an excessively narrow view of the political options facing us. For years I had planned to come here, to his final resting place, and pay my genuine if heavily qualified respects. In the end the visit was almost accidental.

Aug 26, 2024 | 3quarksdaily.com | Richard Farr

I will use this column to defend myself against the accusation, first made by my surgical assistant Mr. Alan Turing, that I was negligent in the death of an individual under my medical care. Or, as one armchair prosecutor has said, that I am "a stereotypically British sentimentalist who thinks dogs are more human than people." The story is an ugly one but the facts are straightforward. It was about 3 AM on a winter's night in the small town of ________ .