Bloom praises the sustaining power of poetry that helps in staying alive

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,…

Mythical look at Britain’s unexpected places

  A Britain in the cracks of the urban façade, a land where unexpected life can flourish, a  land of industrial estates and electricity pylons, o motorways and ring roads of hospitals and housing estates of roundabouts and flyovers, places where modern life speeds past but where people and stories nevertheless collect. Places where human…

“Time and the hour, run through the roughest day”

McCrum a former editor at Faber and Faber, former literary editor of the Observer, and the author of an acclaimed memoir My Year Off, reveals he is a long-standing member of the “Shakespeare Club”,  “quintessentially English mix of stage-struck self-improving playgoers with English literally degrees”. A lively guide to Shakespeare’s life, times, and language, and…

Realistic effort to defend freedom, prosprity and peace

G John Ikenberry, a professor at Princeton University is member of an elite group who claims to come up with idea that has shaped the real-world politics, gives an insight into today’s fractured political movement. Creating an international space for liberal democracy, preserving rights and protections within and between countries and balancing conflicting values such…

Focus into Flume crisis

The Early period between  1917 and 1989, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottaman and Russian Empires yields  an unstable political and economic order plagued by  rival nationalism, Bolshevism and democracies that turn into dictatorships, unleashing the Second World War.  In the latter period the US and the Soviet Union dominate one half of Europe…

Human cognitive diversity

Human cognitive diversity If you are on a plane, do you think about its aerodynamics, or when you look at a mountain do you think about how precisely it was formed or do you notice how the music you are listening to is structured, then you could be a hyper systemiser. People who think like…

Pandemic – the exposed poor and the shielded Rich

The Pandemic has touched every aspect of life bringing death, disease, isolation, joblessness, fear, grief, and despair amid deepening social and economic unequalness. Globalisation is under pressure from nationalism, as countries have closed borders, hoarded PPE  and bartered over vaccine. As geopolitical alliances are being reshaped, the US seems in disorder, China appears invigorated. The…

Holding Power to Account

  Barber’s diaries offer close up view of challenges of editing and of leadership in an age of upheaval, an engaging chronicle of the 14 years at  the FT’s helm. The real scoop isn’t on the front page – Lionel Barber as FT editor for the tech boom,  who whispered or yelled what into the…

The Bristolian, Darth Vader actor Dave Prowse (85) dies

Dave Prowse a former bodybuilder representing England at the Commonwealth Games in 1960s, and who was also given an MBE for his long-running role as the Green Cross Code Man in 1975 and his portrayal in the original Star Wars trilogy has died aged 85. Although brought  up in Bristol, he spent his later years…