In Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus”, language has an unassailable grip on reality. It pictures the world but cannot say how it mirrors reality because we cannot get outside of language to see this mirroring. In his late philosophy, we find the antipode: language has no essence; language-games have different rules and different […]

In “New model island”, Alex Niven is looking for England and he can’t find it. The country existed as a nation state between the tenth and seventeenth centuries but he asks whether the idea of England today has any usefulness as a cultural cause.   Sean Sheehan   In the […]

Vasily Grossman is one of Russia’s greatest twentieth-century writers, possibly the very best. A new biography tells the story of the life of an author who should be better known and recognised for his achievements.   Sean Sheehan   Grossman knew only too well the twin horrors of the twentieth […]

A brief encounter with a Penan is burned into my memory. I was following a pathway, a mere stroll before darkness fell in the Kelabit Highlands in Sarawak where I was on a two-day trek.   Sean  Sheehan   He stepped out of the trees on one side, about to […]