John Boyne (http://johnboyne.com/) was born in Dublin, where he still lives. His first short story was published by the Sunday Tribune and in 1993 was shortlisted for a Hennessy Literary Award. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of East Anglia. He has chaired the jury for the […]
The Heart’s Invisible Furies 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 »
In the week which marked the death of Stephen Hawking on 14 March 2018, many people will be prompted to read one of his books or another on cosmology. Afterglow of Creation is one from which I learned much and enjoyed reading. This is the story of the cosmic background radiation, the ‘afterglow’ of
Afterglow of Creation Read More »
Many people now find the old creeds unconvincing, and are increasingly turning to naturalistic explanations of their world. At significant moments in their lives, such as weddings and funeral services, many opt for a humanist ceremony (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/increasingly-popular-humanist-weddings-to-overtake-church-of-scotland-ceremonies-within-two-years-8581924.html). What, then, of the intellectual underpinnings of this shift in understanding? James Thrower’s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Thrower) concise account of atheism
Western Atheism by James Thrower Read More »
Some years ago, one began to hear people say ‘too much information’. Additionally one’s state of awareness on any matter was confined on a ‘need to know’ basis. Both phrases acknowledge that the totality of human knowledge (especially specialist scientific knowledge) so vastly exceeds any one mind’s capacity to absorb it that the hapless individual
Too Much to Know by Ann M. Blair 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 »
Travelling for a story in Mongolia when five months pregnant, journalist Ariel Levy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Levy_(journalist)) gave birth to her son alone on the floor of her hotel room, shortly after which, he died. This traumatic tragedy damaged the writer in ways which are described in ‘The Rules Do Not Apply’. This memoir is a fast paced account
The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy Read More »
Pulitzer Prize winner Amy Goldstein (http://www.amygoldsteinwriter.com/) spent years immersed in Janesville, Wisconsin where America’s oldest operating General Motors plant shut down in the midst of the Great Recession, two days before Christmas of 2008. With intelligence, sympathy, and insight Goldstein describes what connects and divides people in an era of economic upheaval. Her reporting takes
Janesville by Amy Goldstein Read More »
Jane Austen’s novels have never gone out of fashion, nor received anything less than high critical acclaim. Her work is familiar to millions who have never read a word by means of costume drama on film and television. Through three intertwined histories Jane Austen’s Textual Lives offers a new way of approaching and reading this most familiar
Jane Austen’s Textual Lives by Kathryn Sutherland Read More »
