I love libraries. When I was little, my dad took me, each week, to the local library in our tiny northern industrial town. No doubt, actually quite small, the library seemed huge to me.   Steve Latham   While he perused the adult shelves, I borrowed books of classic boy’s […]

Alan Jacobs’ new book, “Breaking bread with the dead”, is not about spiritualism, but the value of reading old books.   Steve Latham   A US university professor, and cultural conservative, Jacobs recommends reading literature of the past, to help us break out of the straight-jacket of modernity. The prejudice […]

Slavoj Žižek has written that a frustrating aspect of the pandemic is that it continues without end, with no conclusion. It’s an ongoing emergency, which proceeds non-teleologically in different stages.   Steve Latham   As we are learning, with the virus a permanent presence in our world, the implications of […]

Lord Sumption is a former member of the British Supreme Court, who received criticism recently over his remarks about the value of human life.   Steve Latham   He has expressed the opinion that a woman with stage 4 cancer has a life “less valuable” than others, who might benefit […]