Matthew Parkinson Bennett
Articles by Matthew Parkinson Bennett
2019
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World Literature
Macavity was there
Founded in 1929, Faber & Faber had the benefit of the best connections and an astute director who also happened to be one of Britain’s…
2017
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World Literature
Quick! What Would You Read?
Writing is tough, but Annie Dillard doesn’t put on a performance of her struggle to transmute experience into literature. She is a writer who believes…
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Science / Human Sciences
Thinking Machines
Transhumanists want us to merge with machines and upload our minds, promising immortality and total freedom. Like millenarians through the ages, they believe we will…
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Irish Literature
The Mad Muse
An eccentric comic novel by a promising young Irish writer is stylistically ambitious, difficult and truly original. It’s a wonder it got published at all.
2016
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World Literature
Militant Agnostic
A short book from a veteran British philosopher and populariser of philosophy can be seen as a sustained argument against not religion nor science but…
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World Art / Culture
What Lies Behind
For John Berger, the truly great artists are those who struggle to break through to the other side. The struggle is against tradition and convention,…
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Irish Literature
Mind Games
Oppressed by his inability to write and seeking an intense experience, John Lennon sets out, accompanied by his wise and unflappable native guide, Cornelius O’Grady,…
2015
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World Art / Culture
If You Liked This …
The eminent Milanese writer and publisher Roberto Calasso, chairman of Adelphi Edizioni, has an unusual recipe for commercial success: publish only books that you think…
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World Literature
Love Is All You Need
‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’ The writings of Julian of Norwich communicate an…
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Irish History
Between Two Rooms
For many Irish emigrants, and particularly female ones and better educated ones, moving abroad has been less a question of exile than one of escape.…
2014
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World Art / Culture
God is Dead, Long Live Religion
According to Terry Eagleton, the history of the modern age is among other things the search for a viceroy for God. Yet it has been…