We regard our British countryside as precious and ‘natural’. After all, that’s where we find ‘nature’. In truth, almost the entire landmass of the British Isles above the geology is an artefact of human intervention. It all starts, in this context, with the European climatic spasm of 9,700BC and the end of the last ice age. […]
The Making of the British Landscape Read More »
Polly Toynbee (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polly_Toynbee) turned 70 a few weeks ago. The celebrated Guardian columnist has got more sensible things to say than dozens of hair brained media pundits put together. To enjoy a book length exposition of her thoughts I’d start with Unjust Rewards, co-authored with David Walker. It concerns the obscene level of riches that
Unjust Rewards by Polly Toynbee Read More »
Lies, distortion, ignorance and falsity now saturate our culture. A fresh acme was reached during the US Presidential Trump campaign in late 2016 when ‘post-truth’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics) became celebrated. Fact checkers couldn’t keep count of the lies which were being spewed out. Thank goodness the cool voice of reason and a love of truth still exist.
Skeptic by Michael Shermer Read More »
Even something as quotidian and seemingly inconsequential as swearing can be subject to theory. Why do we swear, and what function does it fulfil? Can we infer anything from cultural or historical variations in the practice of swearing? Is it, for example, always intemperate behaviour, and always (in some form) aggressive? Is it always offensive?
What the F by Benjamin K. Bergen Read More »
Fancy a gripping suspense thriller you could read straight through on a cold afternoon? Turn to an author who is fast gaining a reputation for serving up the goods – Ruth Ware. Her latest title is The Woman in Cabin 10. The summary is as follows. Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine is
The Woman in Cabin 10 Read More »
The last person to have read most of the published output probably lived in the 1500s! No person can now read more than a microscopic fraction of the published word (in any of its many formats). Guides, literary criticism and anthologies can offer a tool for the bewildered. Literary criticism, particularly, not merely enthuses about authors and
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism Read More »
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi (http://paulkalanithi.com/bio/) was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a medical student asking
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi Read More »
Chris Wickham challenges the idea, inherited from Edward Gibbon, that Rome went into a ‘decline and fall’. The late Roman world was, as he shows, a stable and sophisticated society, bound together by patronage, commerce and, above all, taxation. Many of its citizens lived in bustling cities or country estates. It did not suddenly fall
The Inheritance of Rome Read More »
Fidel Castro died in Cuba in 2016. With his departure, the dream of communism as a political reality sank below the verge. China is ruled by a ‘communist’ dictatorship but in reality runs a form of state sponsored turbo-capitalism. Russia has reverted to type with a strong man Czar despotism, the Duma being a toothless
Karl Marx by Gareth Stedman Jones Read More »
