E.M. Forster stated ‘Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him’. This is exactly the sentiment that inspired the physician and writer Raymond Tallis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Tallis) to pen his latest book, The Black Mirror: Fragments of an Obituary for Life. It contemplates a life looked back on from beyond; a meditation on being […]
The Black Mirror by Raymond Tallis Read More »
We are all living poorer lives because of cheats, tax dodgers, criminals and the corrupt. The scale of wealth that is stolen from you should make you boil with rage. And it’s not just in hopelessly brutal and corrupt regimes in Africa, South America or Asia that it takes place. It’s in Europe and North America.
Unmasked by Laurence Cockcroft Read More »
From the year 1000 remarkable changes can be charted in Europe. The lifting of the Dark Ages brought with it a huge gain in population (from two million to ten million in England, from four to fourteen million in German-speaking countries, and so on). There were advances in technology, including the adoption of three-field farming
Europe in the High Middle Ages Read More »
Empires come and go. The relative strength of cultures around the globe wax and wane. Europe, arguably, has enjoyed a 500 year dominance. But how did its culture rise to achieve imperial influence? Tim Blanning (https://www.sid.cam.ac.uk/aboutus/people/person.html?crsid=tcb1000) offers some answers by giving an account of ‘the long 18th century’ (1648-1815). He begins with The Treaty of
The Pursuit of Glory Read More »
With a condescending smirk it’s easy to dismiss intellectuals as a bunch of inconsequential twits. Happily, they confine themselves to ‘ivory towers’ in places like Magdalen College, Oxford. Wrong! Intellectuals and thinkers of various stripes have had an enormous impact on the world and all who live in it. The consequence of their thought is profound. What
The Reckless Mind by Mark Lilla Read More »
Some books grow in repute over years as if by gestation. This novel by Michael Chabon (https://www.harpercollins.com/authors/michaelchabon) has quietly become something of a cult classic, readers smiling to themselves about its genius. I wonder if you’ll agree that it’s an astoundingly good read. The summary is as follows. Josef Kavalier smuggles himself out of occupied Prague
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon Read More »
Famously depicted as ‘Crookback Dick’, and as Shakespeare’s ‘bunch-back’d toad’, the murderer of the Princes in the Tower and the warrior vanquished at the Battle of Bosworth Field, Richard III is one of England’s most enigmatic monarchs. Now, with the discovery of Richard’s bones under a car park in Leicester in 2012 and their reburial
This book takes the highly contentious position among historians that the Holy Roman Empire (http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/modern-europe/german-history/holy-roman-empire) was a stable and successful political structure. It is presented as a thematic history of the Empire from its medieval origins to its demise in 1806. In the first of four sections, ‘Ideal’, Peter Wilson shows the power of the imperial ambition:
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The year 2017 sees the 25th anniversary of Iain Banks’s novel of 1992 ‘The Crow Road’. The novel is the tale of Prentice McHoan and his complex Scottish family. Prentice, preoccupied with thoughts of sex, death, booze, drugs, and God, (which interesting person isn’t?) has returned to his home village of Gallanach full of questions about
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