Our February online issue features interviews with a writer and an artist whose work might at first seem diametrically opposed Eddie Peake is the art world’s latest enfant terrible, known as much for his semi-permanent nudity as for the boundary-hopping thrills of his work in performance, dance and film In this interview with Lily Le Brun he discusses some of the ‘horrible and addictive things’ that inspire him At the opposite end of his career, the British novelist Nicholas Mosley reflects upon a life spent in reflection upon the human condition Yet he, too, admits to being inspired to write by the human proclivity to unhappiness and conflict, wondering, even as a lifelong Christian, ‘whether one could call God a lunatic’   We are pleased to publish a slideshow of new paintings by the London-based artist Rob Sherwood (one of which features above) These are accompanied by an essay by Rye Dag Holmboe on the subject of kitsch, lucre and the allure of images In the wake of the election of Syriza in Greece, Joshua Barley surveys recent writing in the country, and literature’s contribution to its ‘defiance in the face of hopelessness and uncertainty, and a restoration of faith in the people, their language and their tradition’   Shawn Wen casts a clear eye over the cult of Joan Didion, the ‘widespread romanticisation’ of whom has recently gained further momentum We also have new poems in translation from the Hungarian Péter Závada, in one of which it is considered that, against the brutality of war, ‘there’s safety in knowing, I thought’ It seems like a fitting epigraph to this issue