Russia is not generally thought of as a seafaring nation. It’s not that Russians were unfamiliar with travel by water, just that for centuries this meant plying the many lakes and vast river network of the great Eurasian landmass. It wasn’t until the reign of Peter the Great in the early 18th century that Russia […]
For readers not of a nautical persuasion, knowing that Captain James Cook’s famous expedition of 1768–71 took place aboard the Endeavour, and that the Endeavour was a type of vessel known as a Whitby collier, probably marks the limit of their interest in the ship that took him to the South Seas. (The really well informed
In the summer of 1771, London’s fashionable society was aflutter with news of Joseph Banks’s return from the South Seas. Almost precisely three years earlier, the young gentleman naturalist and an accompanying team of artists, secretaries and servants had sailed from Plymouth aboard a Whitby collier called Endeavour. Before he left, Banks had been challenged […]
The word ‘circumnavigation’ nowadays belongs to the same category as marathon-running and Everest-climbing: feats of sometimes egomaniacal endurance with no practical purpose, save sometimes to raise money for charity. However, charity was very far from the minds of the first men to circumnavigate the globe. When Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese captain in the service of […]
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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