Illustrated Men
Times Literary Supplement
by george.berridge@the-tls.co.uk
21h ago
This week, Suzi Feay sizes up the public intellectuals, deadbeat aristocrats, hedonistic oligarchs and hardened street soldiers of Andrew O’Hagan’s panoramic new novel and Michael Caines on the prolific and endlessly imaginative world of Ray Bradbury. The post Illustrated Men appeared first on TLS ..read more
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March 2024
Times Literary Supplement
by pablo.scheffer@the-tls.co.uk
21h ago
In March, Miranda France considered Gabriel García Márquez’s final act; Gabriel Josipovici explored how Shakespeare influenced Beckett and the Bloomsbury group; Nicola Shulman reflected on four centuries of women’s diaries; Michael Caines looked back on the life of Ray Bradbury; Carlos Fraenkel reappraised Spinoza’s radical philosophy. Here are some highlights from the month: Love in the time of tourism: The ‘lost’ novel of Gabriel García Márquez No longer mourn for him: Shakespeare in the imagination of Bloomsbury and Samuel Beckett Fear of flying: The literary progress of Ray Bradbury Funny ..read more
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The Cambridge Statue Wars
Times Literary Supplement
by pablo.scheffer@the-tls.co.uk
1d ago
It is, in a way, quite a relief to have a debate about toppling a statue that focuses on its artistic quality rather than the subject’s politics. That is exactly what is happening in Cambridge, where (after much controversy about whether to take down the memorial in Jesus College to Tobias Rustat because of his involvement in the slave trade) the local authority is now insisting on the toppling, or at least the removal, of a statue entitled “The Don”. It is apparently an image of the late Duke of Edinburgh, who was the University Chancellor for decades, but it is not any anti-monarchical agend ..read more
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Silencing the librairie
Times Literary Supplement
by simonwnewsuk1902
2d ago
Literary Londoners have long lamented the depleted state of the Charing Cross Road: where you might once have hoped to while away a little time rummaging for a second-hand book (or two), Korean street food and novelty rubber ducks are now the commodities on offer. A few bookshops do persist in the area, though; and the same may be said of the neighbouring Cecil Court. By contrast, things have taken a turn for the worse in the medieval heart of one of France’s largest cities: Lyon’s Quartier Saint-Jean. Here – on a cobbled street, a short stroll from Lyon Cathedral and the west bank of the Saôn ..read more
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London to Lisbon
Times Literary Supplement
by pablo.scheffer@the-tls.co.uk
2d ago
“In England there is no foolish person who does not write a tourist book, no one extremely foolish who does not write it about Portugal.” So claimed the Lisbon-born historian and novelist Alexandre Herculano in 1854. Almost 100 years later in London, amid the rubble left behind by the Luftwaffe, Rose Macaulay – a contemporary of the Bloomsbury Group best known for her semi- autobiographical novel The Towers of Trebizond (1956) – risked it anyway. The result was the lively, sizeable and popular They Went to Portugal (1946), full of “detailed accounts of … English irruptions” into Europe’s weste ..read more
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Splinters of ice
Times Literary Supplement
by pablo.scheffer@the-tls.co.uk
2d ago
In the early 1990s Jason Everman had some claim to being the most rejected musician in grunge. Once a guitarist for Nirvana, he’d been kicked out for his moody demeanour. He’d then joined another Seattle band, Soundgarden, only to be booted from that group too. But Everman’s life took an unlikely turn: he joined the US Army and became a decorated Green Beret, finding in military life the success that had eluded him in music. Everman’s is one of the happier outcomes in the dozens of tales of musical rejection that make up Jamie Collinson’s book. A band’s peculiar mix of “friendship, creativity ..read more
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Talking the talk
Times Literary Supplement
by pablo.scheffer@the-tls.co.uk
2d ago
The latest book by the archaeologist Steven Mithen traces the evolution of language from the earliest hominins to modern humans’ vociferous consumption of words. The Language Puzzle is an ambitious undertaking that seeks to prove his hypothesis that language was an important driver in pushing Homo sapiens out of the Stone Age and into farming – a cultural shift that set humanity on its current trajectory. Language is inextricably intertwined with what makes us human. The average person knows at least 50,000 different words, and speaks about 16,000 of them a day. There are almost 7,000 language ..read more
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Write Cut Rewrite
Times Literary Supplement
by simonwnewsuk1902
2d ago
In his review of Write Cut Rewrite, the exhibition of contemporary literary manuscripts at the Weston Library in Oxford (March 15), Michael Caines makes a strong case for how a writer’s early drafts can both illuminate their working practices and enhance our understanding of the text in its final form. The idea that “writers have to work at their words”, he says, “may not strike readers of the TLS with the force of revelation”, partly, perhaps, because we have become used to being able to access such material – through books, exhibitions such as this one and online. But reading “A Neglected Re ..read more
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Restore Trust?
Times Literary Supplement
by pablo.scheffer@the-tls.co.uk
2d ago
It is probably one of the advantages of retirement. I have been offered (and, more important, have been able to accept) some of the best lecturing gigs ever in the past few months. This week I gave the Octavia Hill Lecture for the National Trust in London (a lecture that I entitled “Who owns the past?”). In preparation for it, I had a lot of the fun touring around loads of National Trust houses – as I had chosen (appropriately enough) to take most of my examples from within the Trust’s own domain. (A previous bulletin is here.) I went back to some old favourites: Wimpole and Ickworth, both nea ..read more
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Affirmative action
Times Literary Supplement
by simonwnewsuk1902
2d ago
On March 4 – just a few days before International Women’s Day – a new campaign, “I’m Asking for It”, was launched in the UK. Led by the actor Emily Atack, the campaign rejects the idea that the absence of a “no” constitutes consent and instead proclaims that true consent should be “active, voluntary, informed”, as well as “clear and enthusiastic”. It wants such “affirmative consent” to be implemented in Britain, as it has been in Sweden, Denmark, Portugal and Spain. But, while this is certainly an important step, it will not in itself resolve the murkiness of consent, whether in the court or i ..read more
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