Does the term “South Sea Annuity” ring a bell? There is no reason why it should. It is a recondite feature of eighteenth-century government finances, when Britain, engaged in the “Second Hundred Years ...

Does it matter who wrote the books we love? I was recently asked to talk about Elsa Morante (1912–85) at the Italian Cultural Institute in London. The idea was to present her fiction in a celebration ...