Arts
1984 Part Two
So, We’re a year into the “New Normal” (a/k/a The Totalitarianism Rebrand) and things are still looking ….… well, pretty totalitarian. Most of Western Europe is still in “lockdown,” or “under curfew,” or in some [more…]
Review
Book Review
Book Review: A Test of Time Series by David Rohl
Book Review – A Test of Time Volumes 1, 2 & 3 by David Rohl Just occasionally, a piece of historical scholarship comes along that challenges the foundations of our understanding of a period of [more…]
Arts
Book Review: Some Fantastic Place – My Life In and Out of Squeeze by Chris Difford
This is the story of Chris Difford, a ne’er-do-well written off as ‘backward’ at school who went on to achieve fame and fortune as the founder and lyricist of the band Squeeze. Squeeze had a [more…]
Arts
1984 & All That
The totalitarian novel is a relatively new genre, the most well known of these being (in no particular order) Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, [more…]
Book Review
Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War Part 6
The Twin Battles of Mantinea and Cynossema, and Series Conclusion In this final article of the Series, I want to discuss another of Thucydides’ apparent pairs of events – the Battles of Mantinea (late 418 [more…]
Book Review
Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War Part 5
The Corcyran Stasis as a Template for Civil Strife and War While one might characterise the main theme of Thucydides’ work to be the gradual breakdown of Athens, its constitution, character, morality and eventually its [more…]
History
Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War Part 4
The Battle of Sphakteria and the Athenian Expedition to Sicily These two battles stand out in a book full of military engagements because of the dramatic nature of the language employed by the author, that [more…]
Book Review
Book Review: This Sovereign Isle
‘This Sovereign Isle’, or ‘Britain in and out of Europe’ by Robert Tombs was published by Allen Lane on 28th January 2021. I got my copy from Blackwells at a slight discount to the £16.99 RRP [more…]
Book Review
Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War Part 3
The Ruinous Logic of Empire – The Mytilenian Debates and Melian Dialogue These two episodes in Thucydides’ account of the war seem to fit together, firstly the Mytilenian Debates in the Athenians Assembly in 427 [more…]