Something In The Air (15)
Olivier Assayas's film on the aftermath of May 1968 is infantile ultra-leftism
From kitchen to harbour, sometimes I wonder at where I end up
LIKE I say, I get around. Sometimes, though, I even surprise myself.
La Boheme
ENO's production of La Boheme is a triumph,
Books
The Great War
Sunday 21 April 2013
A gripping new history of WWI which starkly outlines its causes and horrific consequences
Mysteries galore from XVII century Scotland to present day Australia
Thursday 18 April 2013
Alexander Seaton is a teacher in Aberdeen in 1635. His duties, in The Devil's Recruit by SG MacLean (Quercus, £18.99), include keeping his students out of the hands of the recruiters for the Scottish armies who are fighting for the Protestant cause in the Thirty Years War.
You Can't Evict An Idea: What Can We Learn From Occupy?
Sunday 14 April 2013
Inspired by the Arab spring, the Spanish indignados and the Occupy movement in the US there were simultaneous protests in 900 towns and cities around the world on October 15 2011.
The March That Shook Blair: An Oral History Of 15 February 2003
Sunday 14 April 2013
The growth in Britain in the 1950s of a mass peace movement, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, embracing many thousands, from Communists to dissident Tories, trades unionists, pacifists, direct action groups and focused campaign groups, has no equal elsewhere in Europe.
Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women
Sunday 14 April 2013
Tabloid campaigns against the 'undeserving poor,' particularly women, are a warning not to be ignored
Shakespeare and Contemporary Theory
Tuesday 09 April 2013
In one of Isaac Asimov's sci-fi short stories, Shakespeare time-travels to the present, takes an English course and fails his Shakespeare paper because he has not read enough criticism.
Foundations Of Modern International Thought
Sunday 07 April 2013
For most of recorded history people lived not in nation states but in far-flung empires and the process of unification and division spurred conceptual competition, facilitating the circulation of ideas among diasporic peoples across commercial routes.
Gangsterismo
Sunday 07 April 2013
Power Systems: Conversations On Global Democratic Uprisings And The New Challenges to US Empire
Sunday 07 April 2013
Taking issue with Noam Chomsky's scepticism about the vanguard role of the working class