New writing by Czech Roma authors: different takes on the story-telling tradition; memories of growing up as a Roma after ’89; mainstreaming Roma writing and the decline of the Romani language. A2 devotes an issue to writing by Czech Roma authors, featuring samples from their works, reviews and interviews. Saša Uhlová provides a short history of… Read More New Roma writing
Louise Pryke For over 3,000 years, cuneiform was the primary language of communication throughout the Ancient Near East (roughly corresponding to the Middle East today) and into parts of the Mediterranean. The dominance of the cuneiform writing style in antiquity has led scholars to refer to it as “the script of the first half of the known… Read More The recovery of cuneiform, the world’s oldest known writing
The U.S. public has been conned, once again, into pouring billions into another endless war The playbook the pimps of war use to lure us into one military fiasco after another, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, does not change. Freedom and democracy are threatened. Evil must be vanquished. Human rights must… Read More Chris Hedges: They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine.
Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History Reviewed by Michael Ledger-Lomas TOWARDS THE END of the first century AD, a Roman emperor met the family of Jesus Christ. Domitian had this failed Messiah’s relatives hauled before him while he was traveling in Palestine to make sure that they posed no threat to his power. They… Read More Tracing the Hard Edges of Religion: On Peter Brown’s “Journeys of the Mind”
Plato of Athens: A Life in Philosophy: By Robin Waterfield DAISY DUNN Contrary to many people’s perception of him, Plato did not spend his entire life listening to Socrates philosophising in colonnades in Athens or writing dialogues meandering through complex ideas. He was once captured in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and put up for… Read More Was He Apollo’s Son?
Louise Pryke The world’s first known author is widely considered to be Enheduanna, a woman who lived in the 23rd century BCE in ancient Mesopotamia (approximately 2285 – 2250 BCE). Enheduanna is a remarkable figure: an ancient “triple threat”, she was a princess and a priestess as well as a writer and poet. The third… Read More Enheduanna, princess, priestess and the world’s first known author
Terry Bell Blanche La Guma who died on Thursday, aged 95, was one of the most unacknowledged veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle. A nurse and midwife, principled, dedicated and intensely loyal, she gladly lived in the shadow of her writer husband Alex who died and was buried in Cuba in 1985. One of her proudest… Read More Obituary: Blanche La Guma
Staement of Jean-Baptiste Drouet, Posting-Master at Sainte-Menehould, who captured the fleeing monarchs: Description: After a late start, the royal family followed a circuitous route through a series of small towns in the countryside. However, things started to go awry near the city of Châlons, where the loyal soldiers due to escort the royal family were… Read More The Flight to Varennes (21–23 June 1791)
Adam Tooze ‘Vautour II’ flying in the cloud of the ‘Canopus’ nuclear explosion, the first explosion of a French thermonuclear bomb, over the lagoon of the Fangataufa atoll in French Polynesia in 1968. The Vautour II was taking samples of material from the cloud. Source: Marlène Aviation https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/russia-under-sanctions-the-foreign?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email Nuclear Testing in the Marshall Islands: A… Read More Mushroom cloud over Fangataufa atoll, French Polynesia, 1968
Jacintha Buddicom and George Orwell were childhood soul mates who lost touch until he was dying. A new postscript to her genteel memoir sheds a disturbing light on their friendship, finds Kathryn Hughes Kathryn Hughes Eric & Us by Jacintha Buddicom From the late 1960s my family spent every weekend and most of the summer… Read More Such were the joys
