What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done when no one was watching? Can an action be brave if it is done in secret, unseen? Perhaps it can but only if you in some way also share the fact that you did it with others, as this prompt asks us so to do. Is it true … More Can an action be brave if it is done in secret, unseen, Lady Godiva?
I am turning to the Online Etymological Dictionary today again for this prompt question, although the issues behind any use of the verb ‘raise’ are largely about its implication that the subject of a the transitive verb (see below) ‘raise’ is always in all the examples I can think of (but I’d love to be … More Let’s concentrate on the word ‘raised’ and its rather frightening semantic history, to unpack the assumptions behind answering about how any actions of mine or their mode of occurrence differ from those I was supposedly ‘raised’ to do or not do them.
What’s the kindest thing someone has ever done for you? Ikram Talaat Ahmed teaches displaced children in Gaza from https://afsc.org/news/courage-and-kindness-amid-loss-gaza Kindness is a strange enough quality I think. It is a word with all its duplicity born in its origins, as Shakespeare noticed when he gives the following dialogue, in a crowded scene (Act 1 … More Kindness is a strange enough quality I think. It is a word with duplicity born in its origins. To be ‘kind’ in truth is to be informed about ‘unkindness’ to those who are in truth still your kind. This blog reflects on Jeremy Corbyn, Neve Gordon and Shahd Hammouri (2026) ‘The Gaza Tribunal: Britain’s Complicity in Genocide’.
Mainly, the only regret I find when I have read a book is that I can’t read it again ‘for the first time’, but it passes! A last day at Edinburgh Book Festival 30th August 2026. I must have been somewhere near Dunbar when I took the photograph from the train that was fast moving … More Mainly, the only regret I find when I have read a book is that I can’t read it again ‘for the first time’, but it passes! A last day at Edinburgh Book Festival 30th August 2026.
In the Epilogue to his book 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia (2026, First paperback edition [first publ. in hardback, 2025], London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson) Phillipe Sands recounts attending a literary festival to promise an earlier book in Valparaiso and being addressed by a reader who had personal … More The most annoying trope in fictional or non-fictional art is that which pretends that, at the end of the book, everything is resolved. This is a blog on ’38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia’ by Philippe Sands which ends in the same ambiguity with which it started, like life itself. Part 2 of a 2 part blog series.
How did you meet your significant other? We met in the 5 Star club in Leicester. I met my husband in the 5 Star Club in Leicester in the 1990s, then the only gay club in the city, though we would see each otjer at the Dover Castle. I can’t remember why I was there … More We met in the 5 Star club in Leicester.
Some tropes are of such long established availability that they are, of themselves, self-mocking. The quest is one such, although I think you have to avoid slippage in calling everything a quest, like the great epics of Archaic Greece, for you cannot quest, or look for, something whose qualities are in some part already known, … More How could we do without the most annoying and ubiquitous of all the tropes in fiction; ‘the quest’.
This is a blog in preparation for an event in Edinburgh this coming Sunday with Colm Tóibín and Philippe Sands. the essence of my interest lies in the following quotation. ‘The generals were in power then, and nobody stayed out late, even though the cafés and bars in the street around us remained open, eerily … More This is a blog in preparation for an event in Edinburgh this coming Sunday as Colm Tóibín and Philippe Sands remember the Dirty Warriors that led the countries of Argentina and Chile and ‘disappeared’ their opponents. I want to know more about why all this matters so urgently again, now!
Apparently the word ‘coincidence’ was possibly used earliest by Sir Thomas Browne, and thus is better left to rest in his Baroque prose as another supposed certainty in a world that is more uncertain than that. Statue of Browne in Norwich by ell brown – https://www.flickr.com/photos/ell-r-brown/4582394924/sizes/o/in/photostream/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25718189 The Online Etymological Website tells … More Apparently the word ‘coincidence’ was possibly used earliest by Sir Thomas Browne, and thus is better left to rest in his Baroque prose as another supposed certainty in a world that is more uncertain than that.
Some books can be read till their end but still not be ‘finished’. Agathe, the first-person narrator of The Vivisectors tells us that she has ‘never been good at …bringing disparate events into a cohesive narrative’ , independently, thus to be gazed at or mixed up as if they were an ‘inchoate mass’. Perhaps you … More Agathe, the first-person narrator of ‘The Vivisectors’ tells us that she has ‘never been good at …bringing disparate events into a cohesive narrative’ , such that either its parts looked like statues standing independently, thus to be gazed at or mixed up as if they were an ‘inchoate mass’. This is a blog on Missouri Williams (2026) ‘The Vivisectors’.
What’s a conspiracy theory you actually find believable? Do we need ‘conspiracy theory’ because we find trust in short supply? August 20th Day Seven in Edinburgh Highlights: 1. Pleasance Dome 10, Moth and Dog Are Dying to Get Out, a play exploring the relationship of two boys, their coming out and the confrontation of distrust … More Do we need ‘conspiracy theory’ because we find trust in short supply? August 20th Day Seven in Edinburgh Highlights: 1. Pleasance Dome 10, ‘Moth and Dog Are Dying to Get Out’, a play exploring the relationship of two boys, their coming out and the confrontation of distrust and ‘conspiracy’ involved (The Fringe Festival); 2. NW Room, Jem Calder & Derek Owusu (The Book Festival) & Courtyard Theatre Édouard Louis (The Book Festival).
Are all historical events meant to be witnessed, and /or is ‘witnessing’ essential to making ‘events’ historical? August 18th Day Six in Edinburgh Highlights: 1. Buggers, a play exploring the relationship of Francis Bacon and George Dyer (The Fringe Festival); 2. Traverse Theatre Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library (the Fringe) & Lyceum Theatre … More Are all historical events meant to be witnessed, and /or is ‘witnessing’ essential to making ‘events’ historical? August 18th Day Six in Edinburgh: Envisaging Buggers, A wandering Hannah Arendt & Men Hanging Together.
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