Interests to be declared: with the exception of the venerable Frith Banbury, I have known no stage director longer nor admired one more than Michael Blakemore. We first met in Sydney when I was eight and he was, I would guess, about eighteen. A doctor’s son determined not to follow in his father’s footsteps, he joined […]
Where do we now stand on James Lees-Milne? In particular, what do we make of these spooky, posthumously published diaries arriving every other year from beyond the grave? Are they tailing off or getting better and better? And what do they tell us about the dear departed diarist himself? Is he the nicest, sweetest man who […]
After spending some time studying cannibals in the South Pacific, the anthropologist Tom Harrisson came home in 1936 and decided that it would be just as interesting to subject the ordinary people of this country to similar scientific scrutiny. This led to the creation of Mass- Observation, very much a typical product of the period. The […]
When she was ten months old Kari Herbert’s father took her and her mother to live in north-west Greenland with an indigenous tribe of hunters then known as Polar Eskimos. The family spent several happy years on Herbert Island (the name is a coincidence), a remote sliver of land that was home to what was then […]
This is a horrifying and extraordinary book. Nobody will read it for pleasure. It is a record of man’s inhumanity to man, an appalling story of Japanese brutality during the Second World War; but – and one can only be grateful for this – it is also testimony to the resilience of the human spirit, to […]
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Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm