Fintan O’Toole (born 16 February 1958) is an Irish journalist and drama critic for The Irish Times for which he has written since 1988. O’Toole was drama critic for the New York Daily News from 1997 to 2001 and is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. He has also written history, literary criticism and political […]
We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole Read More »
Since the attack of 07 October 2023 on Israel (2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel – Wikipedia) the conflict in Gaza has dominated the news. As of 03 January 2024 at least 22,185 Palestinians have been killed and at least 57,000 injured by the Israel Defence Force since October 7. The death toll from the October 7
Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel 1917-2017 by Ian Black Read More »
Germany lies at the centre of The European Union both geographically and economically. Despite its recent slow growth it remains the third largest economy in the world by GDP. (List of countries by GDP (nominal) – Wikipedia) How did it get to this position after being shattered and defeated in 1945 at the end of
Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022 by Frank Trentmann Read More »
There can hardly have been more saturation coverage in the British media than that over Brexit. Every minute aspect of this awful car crash is analysed to death on a daily basis. It now seems unstoppable that on 29 March 2019 The United Kingdom will divorce itself from The European Union. We still don’t know
A Short History of Europe by Simon Jenkins Read More »
The latest outpouring of resentment and anger happens to be in Chemnitz in eastern Germany (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fear-and-loathing-in-neo-nazi-chemnitz-cvzmw52fx), but it’s only an example of what’s cropping up all over the world. In this case, something truly horrible – the resurrection of the fascist far right in Germany – should set all sorts of alarm bells ringing. What
Age of Anger by Pankaj Mishra Read More »
At a tiny hamlet in the Mississippi Delta there stands Bryant’s Grocery. Here in August 1955, a 14-year-old black youth from Chicago, Emmett Till, allegedly flirted with Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. Several days later, Emmett’s body surfaced, tortured and mutilated, in the nearby Tallahatchie River. Carolyn Bryant’s husband Roy and his half-brother J.W. Milam
The Blood of Emmett Till Read More »
Many of us have watched costume dramas about the Tudor period. My favourite image is of Charles Laughton scoffing a whole chicken carcass in the 1933 film The Private Life of Henry VIII (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024473/) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4tOb9J7W2k). More recently there has been the TV drama series ‘The Tudors’ (2007-2010) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758790/). These, combined with school history reading, have fixed
Black Tudors by Miranda Kaufmann Read More »
Five hundred years ago Europeans were exploring their world like never before by crossing the oceans. In the second half of the twentieth century humans broke out of Earth’s atmosphere. It was all part of man’s great adventure – landing on the Moon and sending a rover to Mars, finally seeing the edge of the
This New Ocean by William E. Burrows Read More »
For more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/21/svetlana-alexievich-interview) has been the memory and conscience of the twentieth century. When the Swedish Academy awarded her the Nobel Prize, it cited her invention of ‘a new kind of literary genre’. The quality of her work is seen in The Unwomanly Face of War, in which she chronicles the experiences
The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich Read More »
