Berlin, Vergangenheitsbewältigung and finding freedom in the past
After Prague we travelled by train to Berlin. There were no preeminent icons of literature –…
Reflections on 2018… fragments
This year has had no coherent themes for me, and perhaps that is why I have…
Reflections on 2018… a year of history
Looking over my posts for the year I am struck by the recurrence of history in…
What I am reading… Solzhenitsyn on his limited experience
From a review of recent books on Solzhenitsyn come this brief account of the conservative Russian…
What I am reading … the Opium war and chai
I am reading Stephen Platt, Imperial Twilight: the Opium War and the end of China’s last…
What I am reading… the death of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrígo Borgia)
From Christopher Hibbert, The Borgias and their enemies, 1431-1519, two anecdotes from the death of the…
On the traumatic origins of Machiavelli’s The Prince
I have been watching Medici: Masters of Florence and The Borgias over the last fortnight, and…
Could the culture wars descend into civil wars?
Over at the online magazine Quilette, a Shakespeare scholar at a minor English university, Neerna Parvini,…
The slow death of my history
Over the last couple of months I have been reading history. Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs:…
Poem: The monstrosity of power
Today I am posting a newly written poem, “The Monstrosity of Power”. The monstrosity of…