The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

LITERARY BENT - Writing at its best

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 […]

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Richard III

PAST PRESENT - Readings in History

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

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The Holy Roman Empire

PAST PRESENT - Readings in History

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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Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari

LIVING TOGETHER - Thoughts on Politics & Society, PHILOSOPHY - The love of wisdom

Following on from the global success of his book ‘Sapiens’ (2014, http://sbr.lanark.co.uk/?p=5180 ), Yuval Noah Harari (http://www.ynharari.com/about/) offers us a terrifying vision of the life forms to which, even now, we are giving birth. For 70,000 years Homo sapiens has been the smartest life form on the planet. We love to think so. But one way to depict

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The Great Convergence by Richard Baldwin

LIVING TOGETHER - Thoughts on Politics & Society

When economists seek to explain Brexit, Donald Trump and the rise of populism/nationalism, the concept they most often reach for is ‘globalisation’. Goods and services, it seems, can be produced almost anywhere on the planet and consumed anywhere else, rapidly. This has had profoundly dislocating effects on patterns of employment, income and population movement over

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A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford

EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE - Science & Technology

In each of our individual genomes we carry the history of the whole of our species. Since scientists first read the human genome in 2001 it has been subject to all sorts of claims, counterclaims and mythologising. Drawing together the latest discoveries in this rapidly changing area of science, Adam Rutherford (http://adamrutherford.com/) shows us that in

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