Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
Hardened Skin in the Game
It comes from somewhere, whatever it is. Folks say it starts as a whisper on the Atlantic air: a wheeze, a rustle, a ripple, a swell coming in on the cold; then a sulphurous bouquet of fishy salt and maybe blood. In time, it rises from the sea, a churning vortex. One can, presumably, see…
Don’t Make a Fuss
Munichs, by David Peace, Faber & Faber, 464 pp, £14.99, ISBN: 978-0571381166 The triumphs and tragedies of leading football clubs mean a great deal to many people. But while their fortunes, on and off the pitch, receive blanket media coverage, they rarely feature in literary fiction. One of the few authors who has approached the…
Blame it on the Boogeyman
Feeding the Monster: Why Horror Has a Hold on Us, by Anna Bogutskaya, Faber & Faber, 244 pp American Scary: A History of Horror from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond, by Jeremy Dauber, Algonquin Books, 468 pp The ghost of Jamie Bulger haunted the margins of my childhood, and it returned to haunt my…
The Political Pen
Orwell – the new life, by DJ Taylor, Constable, 960 pp, £14.99, ISBN: 978-1472132987 Who is Big Brother? A Reader’s Guide to George Orwell, by DJ Taylor, Yale University Press, 224 pp, £18.99, ISBN: 978-0300272987 ‘To read him and write about him is one of the greatest satisfactions I know,’ writes DJ Taylor of George…
Helping Spain
‘But to me our real shame lies in our silence regarding Fascism. We must be anti Fascist or all our history is a lie.’ Thus wrote poet Ewart Milne to Muriel MacSwiney on May 19th, 1942, at a stage in World War Two when it was by no means certain that the forces of fascism…
We Done It
We Solve Murders, by Richard Osman, Viking, 464 pp, £22, ISBN: 978-0241608364 Want a cosy mystery that takes place partly in Dublin, Cork, and RTÉ’s studios? We Solve Murders fits the bill. How about a cosy mystery with a grand, idiosyncratic detective champion? That’s not We Solve Murders. Marple. Maigret. Marlowe. Holmes. Poirot. Montalbano. Gamache….
Looking for an Enemy
Reimagining the Jews of Ireland: Historiography, Identity and Representation, Zuleika Rodgers and Natalie Wynn (eds), Peter Lang, 298 pp, €49.40, ISBN: 978-1800790834 The publication of this volume could hardly have come at a worse time for its reception by a world outraged by the ongoing genocide perpetrated by the Israeli government on innocent Palestinian civilians,…
The Evaporation of Hatred
In May 1909, Leonard Dunning, the head constable of Liverpool, wrote to the Home Office in London to warn that some very serious disturbances were looming in the city. Dunning had previously spent thirteen years in the Royal Irish Constabulary and, as he reminded Whitehall, ‘had a good deal of experience of troubles between Orangemen…
Power and the Polis
In much of the ancient world a city’s emblem was its walls. ‘O Ur-shanabi,’ proclaims the hero in the last lines of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, ‘climb Uruk’s wall and walk back and forth!’ Realising he cannot escape death, Gilgamesh takes comfort knowing the city walls of Uruk will be his legacy. The Old…
Written on Water
In a moving obituary in New Left Review, the great sociologist Stuart Hall noted Raphael Samuel’s talent for ‘quarrying’ lives and historical themes. Inadvertently or not, in employing this verb – it recurs three times in the relatively short text – Hall evokes one of his friend, comrade and colleague’s short studies, ‘Headington Quarry: Recording…
Semper Invicta
Warsaw Tales, edited by Helen Constantine and selected and translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Oxford University Press, 256 pp, £12.99, ISBN: 978-0192855565 1/4 h west of Hohenstein on one of the highest points of the battlefield, the Tannenberg National Monument, 193m (shortly before on the road restaurant Tannenbergkrug with the Tannenberg battle relief, in summer…
The Case for the State
The largely successful growth of the world economy since 1945, which has seen hundreds of millions of people lifted out of poverty and continuing scientific and technological development, has been based on a system of multilateral global governance developed in the aftermath of World War II. That system of governance, which has been taken for…