This is no book; who touches this touches a man: Walt Whitman Zweig and his second wife, Charlotte Elisabeth Altmann, committed suicide on February 22, 1942; the day after he submitted the manuscript of this book to the publisher. His farewell message read: I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect… Read More Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday
Netra News obituary for the first female prime minister of Bangladesh She became only the second woman ever elected prime minister in a Muslim-majority country, leading a party that liked to cast itself as the centre-right antidote to the Awami League’s secular nationalism. By the time her Bangladesh Nationalist Party returned to power in 2001,… Read More Begum Khaleda Zia, the walking contradiction
Some music for Christmas Christmas with André Rieu – Live in Maastricht (2019) WW1: Christmas Truce of 1914 – Vision of Humanity The Soldiers’ Christmas Truce 1914 / Armistice Day, November 11, 1918: In Pictures The Little Drummer Boy (originally known as Carol of the Drum) is a popular Christmas song written by the American classical music composer and teacher Katherine… Read More The Little Drummer Boy / Christmas with André Rieu – Live in Maastricht (2019)
As I look back on their lives, I can now see, more clearly than when I was young, how my parents affirmed, in practice rather than in theory, the spirit of fraternity and non-discrimination Ramachandra Guha’s tribute to his parents. May their souls rest in peace This column stays away from mentioning my family, but… Read More Quiet luminescence
This photograph was taken around 2000, in my parents retirement home in Pune Mother with our dear family friend Gurdip Singh, on his farm in Kulwedhi, near Kunjpura around 1973 These happy photos of my parents were taken in the Doon School, around 1972 God made a wonderful mother / A mother who never grows… Read More Georgina Pinto Lobo (Jean Simeon): August 8, 1924 – December 2, 2004
María Ramírez Franco’s Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936 – by Jeremy Treglown Reviewed by Jeremy Adelman On August 19, 1936, militiamen loyal to General Francisco Franco murdered Spain’s famous poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca. Afterward, one of the killers, the Falangist Juan Trecastro, burst into a local bar and said, “We’ve just… Read More Spain: Emerging from the Labyrinth / I grew up in Spain amid a collective amnesia about Franco. It is time we faced up to our dark past
In a new memoir, journalist Lara Marlowe recalls the life she shared with her former husband Lara Marlowe When the British journalist Robert Fisk died of a stroke at St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin on October 30th, 2020, we had been divorced for 11 years and separated much longer. In the year since Robert’s death,… Read More Life with Robert Fisk: I realised I would not be at peace until I wrote this book
NB: In the period October 31 till November 2, 1984, mass violence in Delhi following the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi resulted in the deaths of thousands of Sikhs resident of Delhi. The official figures were just under 3000; but many believe this to be an understatement. In the links beneath this article, there is… Read More Justice still eludes 1984 victims, only 39 convictions in 650 cases / Forty-one years on: 13 murder convictions, 253 acquittals
The faintest of all human passions is the love of truth: A. E. Housman (1859-1936) Protestors in Amritsar with photographs of relatives who were killed in the 1984 riots. | Narinder Nanu/AFP NB: Today is the forty-first anniversary of the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi and the beginning of the massacre of innocent Sikh residents of… Read More How far would I have gone to get away? Mukul Kesavan remembers the 1984 violence against Sikhs
Today is my dear father’s 107th birthday, he was born this day in Allahabad in 1918; just before the end of the first world war. I have written about him before, so will not repeat myself: this is what I posted on his centenary in 2018; it contains a short account of his life. And… Read More Lt Col Eric Simeon’s 107th birthday: October 29, 1918 – October 29, 2025
After the truth-shower 