An announcement from the Polish Government on July 31st 2007, halting work on a stretch of by-pass, hardly sent shock-waves round Europe. Work on the road round Augustow – in Podlaskie, the country’s easternmost province – will in any case continue either side of the Natura-2000-designated area in the Rospuda Valley. The spectacularly clumsy tactics […]
Visiting Romania recently an advertisement on commercial radio caught my attention. At first there was just the engine-noise of a large approaching vehicle, being greeted by a hubbub of angry voices. Now the jostled, harassed voice of a ‘reporter’ informed you that what you were hearing was the sound of a protest, as yet another […]
Mary Midgley has arguably achieved for philosophy what several science writers have achieved for their own field in recent years: namely a very large audience. And whilst her scientific colleagues have benefited from the prestige of their subject, her own achievement has been in the face of nation-wide department closures and a general public not […]
There was an advertisement for a mobile phone company before this film in the London cinema where I saw it. It presented a sequence of life-changing moments. A father stares from the screen and falteringly embarks upon a momentous confession, to a child ‘old enough to know now’. Or an actress, fixing the camera with […]
Southern Romania. On the buses that carry you between the small towns along the bank of the Danube a curious arrangement is in operation. At each stop the driver passes up and down the aisle collecting new fares. He offers me a student fare, for example, and then knocks ten per cent off that. To […]
There were exhibitions and a film I'd wanted to see passing through London so I'd ignored the newspapers all the previous day. It was only as we were boarding that I found out. Some passengers ahead of me in the queue were delaying everybody, helping themselves to three or four different newspapers at the entrance […]
“It were unwise to be sanguine and unphilosophical to despair” – John Playfair, 1814. In an essay of 1888, with the novels on which his reputation rests both completed, Samuel Butler reflected on how he might describe himself. “Philosophical writer” was the best fit, he concluded, even if any close reader of Butler will agree […]
“You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars” [Thomas Traherne (1637-75)] On a summer's day, two years ago, I was in a plane that was passing over the Alps. There was a thin layer of burnt jet-fuel […]
