One can say that Gorbachev was not up to the task before him, if only because he did not fully understand it. But, it has to be added, nobody else did either. The Soviet Union had become a sclerotic case…

The heroes of these books are anguished men who nurse large grievances, battle grasping wives and dominating fathers, and are out of sync with the rah-rah optimism of the times. They make their way through an America at the zenith…

Pinker believes that the growth of empathy has much to do with increasing literacy – reading profoundly deepens the understanding of the perspective of others – and attributes to this the “humanitarian revolution” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which…

Ironically, in a referendum the people rejected a recently proposed reform – the so-called “Abbeylara” amendment which would have enhanced the power of the Oireachtas relative to government. A recent study of the reasons why people voted as they did…

In spite of his bitterness, Dedalus nevertheless betrays a lingering fascination with Catholic vocabulary and concepts, as is pointed out by an acquaintance later in the novel: “It is a curious thing, do you know,” Cranley said dispassionately, “how your…

Yet it is quite inadequate to approach child abuse as a sin; it is a compulsive behaviour, it harms children, and it is a crime. For those who see child abuse as a sin, repentance and absolution might wipe the…

The same year Rodrigo Borgia, one of the most controversial of the many controversial Renaissance popes, became Pope Alexander VI. As Unger notes, he “was on intimate terms with … Greed, Wrath, Lust, Gluttony, and Pride”. He was widely reported…

Burnside’s poems inhabit places at the shifting and hazy intersection between the visible and invisible worlds, a zone where the dead “have more friends than the living”. Their aura of quiet fragility and gentleness can be deceiving; there is no…

Nonetheless, as letter after letter testifies, for Beckett “the essential doesn’t change” and a deeply ingrained pessimism, tempered by sympathy and loyalty, pervades these pages, as one would perhaps expect it to.

Murray’s attitude is, at times, one of barely concealed impatience with the Freudian and other theoretical perspectives which have been brought to bear on his subject. This is a stance which can yield useful correctives, as when he protests against…

Didion’s sensibility has roots in sixties drift and New Journalism iconoclasm, but refracted through a conservative temperament, not unlike the satirical streak of her contemporary Tom Wolfe, that is partly an expression of her origins: Episcopalian, California old money, daughter…