Germany was united for the first in its modern history 150 years ago for two reasons. Before 1871, Germany was not a nation, but an idea its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand as to how would he bring thirty-nine individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser, convincing proud…
Clyde Prestowitz who worked for President Ronald Regan, and renowned globalisation and Asian expert has advised subsequent US administrations offers useful advice for Joe Biden the new American 46th president to adopt, as resetting US relations with China will be one of his top agenda. The strategies that the United States and its allies can…
Capitalism was stuck as it had no answers to a host of problems, including inequality, the digital divide, disease, poverty, dementia, the environmental crisis even before the 2020 pandemic. Mariana Mazzucato, a high profile economist noted for her advocacy of a more active state calls for rethinking our capabilities and role of government within the…
Bellingcat, the home-grown investigative unit, the most innovative practitioners of open-source intelligence and online journalism, self-taught internet sleuths end up solving several mega crimes of our time. Their founder, a high school dropout on a kitchen laptop tells the story of how they created a whole new category of information-gathering galvanising citizen journalists across the…
The Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson‘s debut novel “Her Heart for a Compass”, tells a fictional account of the life and love story of her great-great-aunt Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas Scott, which in many ways draw on “many parallels” from her own life. Romantic fiction publisher Mills & Boons describes the novel as an “…
John Gray’s Feline Philosophy, is a collection of quotes from great thinkers about their furry companions. `Gray agrees with honourable tradition of philosophers who are paradoxically suspicious of philosophical thoughts. Some consider philosophy is a symptom of mental disorder. The best philosophy is one that cures itself, leaving nothing to philosophise about and the world…
Respected financial journalist Alex Brummer and Brexit supporter was offering an argument for optimism in his must read book The Great British Reboot, and offers a manifesto for how to re-engineer the UK economy. Brummer’s prescriptions align with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s political prospectus, despite the gap between strategy and implementation remains wide apart. His analysis of…
Mark Antony, determined to avenge the assassination of his pal Julius Caesar, sent his henchman far and wide to hunt down his killers. One of those nasty fellows was a bloke called Publius Cornelius Dolabella, renowned as a rapist. His sidekick known only as the Samarian, was a sadist handy with a heated knife, who…
Historian and Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, Selina Todd in Snakes and Ladders narrates several personal stories of servants’ children who became the clerks in Victorian Britain and mangers made redundant by the 2008 financial crash, travelling up or down the social ladder and reveals the hidden history of how people have…
Harold Bloom the scared monster of the American Academy, literary critic and Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University, who died in October 2019 aged ninety left behind a abundant literary criticism and cultural commentary which is indeed Erudite and charismatic. Harold Bloom often cited Paul Valery’s bon mot that poem was never finished,…