Friday, March 14, 2014

Critics

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Critics – whether of the film, theatre, art, book (or indeed wine!) sort – are not exactly the most admired profession. For most people th...
Sunday, March 9, 2014

Beautiful Books

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Neagu Djuvara  is a Romanian intellectual with a striking history (he's 97 years old) and has just produced a Brief Illustrated Hist...
Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Toward the End

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Faithful readers will know that, at the start of the new millennium, I started to express my own personal anxieties about the direction ...
Monday, February 24, 2014

French letters

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The writings of  Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) have always given me pleasure – not so much her novels as the various parts of her autobi...
Thursday, February 20, 2014

Let's talk about Scotland

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It was 21 years ago that Czechia and Slovakia split from one another – to each’s great surprise. I was there in 1992/93– and can vivi...

Ilia Petrov

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Had a great privilege yesterday – to visit the house and studio of llia Petrov (1903-1975) - one of the great Bulgarian artists. Accordi...
Monday, February 17, 2014

What is Populism?

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The obvious question after yesterday’s post is - What is “populism”? One academic, in a useful overview  is quoted as claiming there wer...
Sunday, February 16, 2014

Bulgarian populism and the protests

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Globalism has failed. Monetarism has failed. The liberal politics of “less government, the market has the final say” has failed. The wor...