All in all, a rather amusing year I thought. Here are a few photos from the twelve months just past us, in no particular order. read more

Michael Rennier and I first met some years ago as we moved in the same vaguely intellectual circles that congregated in various places between New York and Boston. read more

In one of the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum’s American wing hangs this portrait of Colonel Marinus Willett of the Continental Army’s 5th New York Regiment. read more

The circumstances in which Picasso’s portrait of Stalin was commissioned are amusingly relayed in Beevor and Cooper’s history, Paris After the Liberation. read more

As today is the eighty-fourth birthday of Jacques Chirac, I thought it’d be best to share a few images of the fifth president of the Fifth Republic doing the things he does best. read more

Well, actually it’s Broad Street looking down past the New York Stock Exchange to Federal Hall, which itself is on Wall Street. read more

“We had supper with Mr. Canitz, the painter, one Sunday night, by the light of candles in a fine Dutch candelabra, and drove back to Stellenbosch in moon light which had transformed the countryside into the most entrancing fairyland imaginable…” read more

In 1831 the Museum of Foreign Literature Science and Arts published this little progression of headlines claimed to have been clipped from French newspapers after Napoleon’s escape from Elba. read more

Little Holland’s rule over this vast land – today the world’s largest Muslim country by population – never loomed large in the European imagination and thus has been too easily forgotten. read more

This country’s latest warship isn’t some grey-painted stealth frigate but a four-masted, steel-hulled, full-rigged barque. read more

If there is any season which is plus New-Yorkaise que les autres then it must be autumn, and around the time of Hallowe’en in particular. read more

The Dutch engraver & printer Johannes Kip followed William of Orange to London after the English Revolution of 1688, and produced this splendid view of London and Westminster. read more

“They are alive — and they are killing us!” Joseph de Maistre on the works and wasted talent of François-Marie Arouet. read more

The charmingly haphazard Church of St Nicholas in Silton is home to what is arguably the finest funerary monument in Dorset not in a major church. read more

The Daniel Marotplein, a residential square in the town of Zeist, provides a fine recent example of traditional architecture in the Netherlands. read more

Fifty years ago it was the third poorest country in Africa. Today it is the sixth richest. How that happened might be thanks to the House of Khama. read more

The Scandos are known for being among the few peoples who can do modernism well, as evidenced by the new design chosen for Norway’s passports and identity cards. read more

The Baroque is a style of joy, but it is also the style of the surprise: the corner turned to an unexpected vista or the jet of water sprinkling a king’s unsuspecting courtier. read more

Though overshadowed by the more theatrical T.E. Lawrence, Sir Mark Sykes was still by all accounts a remarkable man, and should be known for his contribution to Pan-Arabist vexillology. read more

It’s not surprising that Robert Gwelo Goodman — one of my favourite South African artists — lived in a unique dwelling nestled in the nape of Table Mountain. read more

Daniel O’Connell was a remarkable man by any stretch of the imagination. Among his many achievements, however, was in London in 1825 founding the National Bank of Ireland. read more

What are we to make of the growing movement against the name ‘Czech Republic’? read more

Look at this cragly visage! It belongs to the first Speaker of the House of Assembly in the Cape Parliament. read more

It’s interesting to read the Los Angeles Times’s coverage of Pius XII’s election in the difficult year of 1939. read more

There are some good (if brief) shots of the Irish House of Lords chamber in this Christmas ad for the Bank of Ireland. read more

The German advertising agency Oliver Voss created this series of ads for Hamburg’s daily evening newspaper. read more

An interesting video from two American academics with some three-dimensional reconstructions of the Dominican and Franciscan houses in the city. read more

With the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court in the news, the Sybarite weighs in on the important matter of judicial dress. read more

What a pleasure it must be to receive a letter from the designer Frank Ortmann. read more

…and why they stayed. Marnix de Bruyne has shed new light on the post-war wave of Dutch immigration to Rhodesia with his new book. read more

Book design is sadly neglected in the English-speaking world. In paperbacks, the French reign supreme, while the Teutons and Scandos design the most elegant hardcover books. read more

Always interesting to see a building you know well from a perspective you’ve never seen before, as in this photo of St James, Spanish Place, taken from Manchester Mews. read more

An explanation of the arms of the Afrikaans-speaking Oratory of St Philip Neri in Oudtshoorn, South Africa. read more

Most large developed countries have been facing demographic crises, but the FT reports Russia appears to be turning a corner. read more

A photograph looking towards the rococo staircase with its steps, columns, and balustrades of red marble from Castellammare del Golfo. read more

The Dublin Civic Trust has a blogpost on the Bank of Ireland’s 1802 competition to redesign the former Houses of Parliament on College Green. read more

Alongside a bazaar, a braai, and dancing, a speech by Sir De Villiers Graaff is the selling point of this poster advertising a United Party get-together in the beautiful Overberg region of the Cape. read more

A senior academic suggesting that the demise of Heythrop was an episode in a long struggle between “outward-facing, inquisitive, challenging” theology on one side and “inward-looking, submissive, unquestioning” theology on the other is telling. read more

The recent arrival of the new fiver has caused some flurry of excitement and one of the notes finally reached the Cusackian exchequer in Salisbury on Friday night. read more

Antal Szerb is probably better known as paragon and only member of the interwar neofrivolist school of literature. read more

The opening of Scotland’s judicial year was marked this past Sunday by the Archbishop of St Andrews & Edinburgh offering the customary Red Mass in St Mary’s Cathedral. read more

Geoffrey Tyack writes with a fluid style that accesibly conveys a great amount of specific detail without the reader feeling the least bit overwhelmed. read more

The old water pump in the Cape Town neighbourhood of Oranjezicht was part of the system created by Jan Frederik Hurling in the 1790s for his farm, Zorgfliet. read more

The façade is a little clunky but flowers soften this stern civic edifice with a bit of welcome frivolity. read more

Among Daniel Mitsui’s latest works is a Chinese ink drawing on a Catholic theme. read more

My old desk when I was working at The New Criterion in New York. read more

German typography and print design in the 1950s combined elegance and simplicity. read more

As today is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, here is the documentary we made regarding the Order of Malta’s annual pilgrimage to Lourdes each May. read more

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A man festively attired in a Tweede Nuwejaar outfit in patriotic colours stands in front of a side wall in Cape Town urging voters to vote ‘No’ in the 1960 republic referendum. read more

It is often said that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter — but what inspires the man who refuses to fight? Is he a coward? A man of conscience? Or a mere contrarian who goes too far? read more

Staatspresident Jacobus Johannes Fouché giving the staatsrede from the throne of the Senate within the Houses of Parliament in Cape Town. read more

If you don’t think you’ve been getting enough Cusack lately, then you will probably welcome my new blog, Daily Cusack. read more

Calling in at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican the other day, I was confronted with an interwar mappa mundi that displayed some difficulties of Latin toponymy. read more

Sipping a postprandial Coke last week while flipping through the Irish Times, my wandering eye was drawn towards that newspaper’s report on the Madrid congress of the European People’s Party. read more

“I found many of my all-white students at the University of Cape Town tediously dogmatic in their supposed progressiveness,” writes Paul Moorcraft. But at Stellenbosch the students were “much more open-minded.” read more