Latest Blogs
Helmut Schmidt: 1918 – 2015
The former German chancellor, who died today, was one of the major figures of the European centre left in the twentieth century. Though this centre-leftism was a different thing from Blairism, Schmidt was a tough and practical man. People who have visions should see the doctor, he thought.
Fire On The Peforming Bears
The great French socialist leader Leon Blum was much hated by the extreme right in the 1930s, and largely because he was Jewish. It should also however be remembered that he was much hated by the extreme left.
The Making of Britain
In 1603, William Shakespeare was, among other things, an English dramatist. With the accession of James Stuart of Scotland to the English throne he was to have to learn to become a British one.
Band of Brothers
St Crispin’s Day, the day on which the Battle of Agincourt was fought six hundred years ago, was a glorious one for England. Its memory was called upon at another difficult time in the mid-twentieth century, but the Agincourt battle scenes in Laurence Olivier’s ‘Henry V’ were in fact filmed in Ireland.
The Ferment of the Revival
Ireland in the early 1890s was a country in paralysis, but over the next thirty years it began to move again as ideas bubbled up and were debated in new journals, clubs and societies. A new anthology catches the cultural ferment of that era.
Ferrante on Austen
The Italian novelist Elena Ferrante has written a sharp analysis of the moral world of Jane Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’, though her theories on its anonymous publication may tell us more about Ferrante’s motives than Austen’s.
We’re the Brits and We Don’t Care
According to some British commentators, it doesn’t hugely matter whether Britain is formally in or out of Europe. In reality it will always be half-in, and that suits it, and its financial sector in particular, just fine.
Christ Never Made It As Far As Here
Exiled to the remote south by Mussolini’s fascist regime, painter, writer and medical doctor Carlo Levi found there a peasant society that had apparently remained untouched by civilisation or modernity.
The Consolations of Coltrane
A new novel by Kevin Stevens tells of the frustrations and confusions of adolescence, the precarious position of immigrants in an indifferent or hostile host society and the consolations of friendship, love and music.
Turned Out Nice Again
Artists and painters have long been fascinated by the weather and have not ceased to be so even in an era where mystery and religious speculation have largely moved over for science. Our tendency to worship nature suggests a question: is God the thing we see when we look up?
Port In A Storm
Many Irish over the centuries sought refuge in Liverpool, and once they arrived there didn’t go far, settling in Vauxhall near the docks or on Scotland Road. The local MP, TP O’Connor, represented Liverpool Scotland as an Irish nationalist from 1885 until his death in 1929.
A Literary Terrorist
One critic has compared reading Charles Maturin’s Melmoth to climbing Mount Everest, yet the novel continues to appeal, in part perhaps because of its role in creating a genre that is still potent in global culture –in Hollywood movies, popular music and manga animation.