The mortality figures presented by A.C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, London, in the appendix of his recent book Amongst the Dead Cities are shocking. Shocking because of their scale, but also because they are a surprise. The Allies’ use of saturation bombing, deliberately targetting civilians in Germany and Japan, has long been […]
“Longley hasn’t advertised himself as a Muse-poet, but that is what he is, a love poet, and a nature poet, a celebrant of the female principle; and like Graves he is also a war poet, of the two world wars in which his father fought, and of the war of nerves in Northern Ireland, where […]
Trying to contact Tim Winton appears to be no easy matter. A couple of false starts, and a period of waiting is required before Three Monkeys finally manages to get in touch with the Australian author. The surprise then is how engaged Winton is once contact has been made. His remoteness a physical reality rather […]
“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 […]
“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 […]
A coalition government has been formed in Poland. Well, not really. At the last moment someone pulled out so the coalition is still in a minority. It’s just that now it has lost every last shred and tatter of repsectability. Here’s the BBC on the subject. How the writer refrained from adding the words “by […]
A tale is told which is meant to illustrate the difference between the US mindset and the Russian and explain why the US won the cold war. When an American peasant sees his neighbour build a large and pleasant house he thinks “some day I’ll build myself a better house.” The Russian peasant, the conventional […]
Chavez is an object lesson in the way the mainstream media works. Consider this article in the Sunday Times by Sarah Baxter. Firstly, there’s the title, with its reference to Evelyn Waugh’s Black Mischief: “Mischief stirs for Bush in the ‘axis of good’.” Perhaps if Baxter knew more about Waugh than the titles of his […]
Saturday’s Gazeta Wyborcza carries a report by Maciej Stasinski about Teodoro Petkoff, the 74-year-old challenger to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. This newspaper, please note, is regarded with deep suspicion for its left-wing and liberal sympathies by the right wing political establishment in Poland. On a couple of things, though, this newspaper, the American media and […]