Anthropologists having being studying ritual in human societies on a formal basis since Emile Durkheim (1858—1917) (Durkheim, Emile | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Ritual is a condensed event within a human society that contains a high degree of symbolism. Building on a solid body of scholarship about ritual, this author connects the findings with neuroscience. […]
Ritual by Dimitris Xygalatas Read More »
Ann Cleves (Ann Cleeves) has been delighting readers with her mystery crime fiction since 1986. She has given us the characters Vera Stanhope, Jimmy Perez and Matthew Venn. The author is in fine form with The Long Call (2019), and the summary is as follows: It’s North Devon where the rivers Taw and Torridge converge and
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Imagine a new political party in the UK. It launches as the ‘Anti-Democratic Party’. Its purpose is clearly and unambiguously stated. It promises to abolish democracy and replace it with a dictatorship in the UK. The Houses of Parliament will be turned into an upmarket shopping mall. During campaigning it does not use any form
The Myths We Live By – Peter Cave Read More »
It is early June 2025 and the headline news covers a spat between the world’s richest man and the the world’s most powerful man (Opinion | Musk and Trump’s Twitter Fight Reveals How Power Works Today – POLITICO). It is not edifying. Comparison with the finer specimens of humanity in its history speaks to another
The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey Read More »
Our media, ‘legacy’ and contemporary, saturate us with crises: the cost of living crisis, the illegal migrant crisis, the Ukraine war crisis, the US tariff crisis, the epidemic of thieving crisis, the Scottish drug death crisis, the housing shortage crisis, the terrrorist threat crisis, the environmental damage crisis. Listen to all the dire warnings and
The Grapevine by Kate Kemp Read More »
Sarah Bakewell (About | Sarah Bakewell) has provided the reader with a really useful and enjoyable history of humanist freethinking over the past 700 years in this book. Be prepared to meet a large cast of characters who have contributed to the humanist outlook: Giovanni Boccaccio, Francesco Petrarca, Leontinus Pilatus, Niccolo Niccoli, Poggio Bracciolini, Aldus
Humanly Possible by Sarah Bakewell Read More »
This year, 2025, marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of ‘The Trial’ by Franz Kafka. One may often feel the world has gone nuts. In 2025 we hear that the 47th President of the United States is going to make Canada the 51st State, annex Greenland and turn Gaza into a luxury Mediterranean resort
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There can come a point in a reader’s life when the span of that life becomes history. Ian Kershaw’s (A life in writing: Ian Kershaw | History books | The Guardian and Ian Kershaw – Wikipedia) book ‘The Global Age’ covers the period 1950-2017, a time span that many will remember personally. The long shadow
The Global Age: Europe 1950-2017 by Ian Kershaw Read More »
The chief source material for the guerrillas in this tale is the life of ‘Michael X’ (born Michael de Freitas, of mixed race, in Trinidad of a Portuguese father). (Michael X – Wikipedia) Adopting a black Muslim identity, de Freitas worked in London as a thug for Peter Rachman. Then, seeing the incontrovertible truth of
Guerrillas by V.S. Naipaul Read More »
