For most of us who are not sadists, it is hard to understand how a human being can get pleasure from the acute suffering of another sentient creature. Worryingly, the personality trait has emerged throughout recorded history and exists in the present day. As you read this thousands of humans and other animals are being tortured. […]
Infamous Lady by Kimberly L. Craft Read More »
Racial tensions in America have not gone away 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Civil_Rights_Movement_(1954%E2%80%9368)), and there is much talk in the media and among pundits about the enduring legacy of slavery. The 2013 film 12 Years a Slave (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2024544/?ref_=nv_sr_2) was an adaptation of the 1853 slave narrative memoir by Solomon Northup, a New York State-born free African-American man who
Novelist Susan Barker (http://susanbarker.co.uk/about/) has gained an appreciative readership over the last 10 years. Her third novel is about a taxi driver in contemporary Beijing and is interwoven with tales from the Tang Dynasty, the invasion of Genghis Khan, the Ming Dynasty, the Opium Wars, and the Cultural Revolution. Whilst writing The Incarnations Barker spent several years
2017 will be a significant year for readers of history, particularly religious history. It will be 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Church door at Wittenberg in Saxony. For convenience, the event in 1517 is taken to be the start of what came to be known as ‘The Protestant Reformation’.
Navigating through human life is, as we all realise, a tricky business. One of the persistent suspicions that may beset us is that people are not all they seem. They may be offering us a persona which conceals hidden motives, desires, tastes, values etc. How well do you really know those that are closest to
As our knowledge of the natural world deepened from the mid nineteenth century onward it became increasingly implausible to think that humans were in any sense unique or special. Features that had been offered as uniquely human were complex communication, social organisation, capacity for suffering, personality and empathy. These are all now known to be
Fancy a holiday in Cyprus? A holiday in the imagination which does not involve that early morning trip to the airport or any of the disagreeable hassle of travel? Take flight instead with the latest novel by Irish writer Lucinda Riley (http://www.lucindariley.com/home/4591002983). The Olive Tree will transport you to the Eastern Mediterranean from your armchair
In the dappled late May sunshine of South Lanarkshire, it may just be possible to detect the live murmur of a summer’s day. Your day will not be out of the ordinary. In the background the servants are busy with their morning tasks, and the clatter of pots and pans drifts over the policies to
The Penguin Book of the British Short Story, edited by Philip Hensher Read More »
On 23rd June 2016 the British electorate voted for the country to leave the European Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum,_2016. Votes for ‘Brexit’ were concentrated in certain regions and in certain social classes. Scotland largely voted to remain. The day was the culmination of about 12 weeks of saturation debate, claim, counter claim, lies, distortion, exaggeration, scaremongering, passionate
Sovereignty by Francis Hinsley Read More »
