13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat
In early 2017 I wrote a series of posts – or let us call them essays…
Sound and fury told by the American cultural “elite”
There are few funny stories to emerge from American politics over the last two months, especially…
On living not by lies
2020 has taught us through bitter experience that our societies are not vaccinated against totalitarianism, and…
My last words on 2020 from Thomas Browne’s Urn Burial
Oblivion. Death. The rites we practise to farewell the dead. What better themes to end 2020?…
Fragments from the Burning Archive: Mikhail Bakhtin
I plunged again into my white box of old handwritten index cards today, and pulled from…
Fragments from the Burning Archive: Anna Akhmatova
In my study is a box of old index cards with fragmentary thoughts, notes on narratives…
The year of fear: 2020 in review
The year of fear 2020 has been the year of the Great Fear. This Fear has…
The freedom of internal exile: 2020 in review
The freedom of internal exile So much of this year I have struggled with the moral…
Cultural fragmentation and the collapse of authority in Western democracies
My repost today comes from 22 April 2018, and seems relevant to the difficulties we are…
culture / history / literature
Cultural collapse: Delhi 1857
Today, I am reposting this response to William Dalrymple’s magnificent The Last Mughal: the Fall of…