In Focus

In Focus

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A palliative society, a bare survival

Byung-Chul Han is a Korean-born philosopher, based in Germany. Training initially as a metallurgist, he moved west and switched disciplines, becoming now one of our chief public intellectuals. Steve Latham   He has examined the impact of social and technological change on the psyche of contemporary culture, concentrating on how […]

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Ukraine, the graveyard of Putin’s dreams?

Fukuyama’s influential claim that history – driven by the conflict of ideologies – ended with the end of the USSR and Gorbachev’s commitment to stop interfering in the affairs of eastern European countries, was revised by its author in 2018. He adapted his analysis to say instead that identity is […]

Book reviews Comments Culture In Focus

All human life is here

Bloodaxe Books has done more for appreciating poetry than any other publisher and it all started, back in 2002, with “Staying human: new poems for staying alive”.   Sean Sheehan   This anthology was hugely and deservedly popular and two years later “Being alive“ came out, followed in 2011 by […]

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The unfulfilled longing

I have a distinct childhood memory, of a scene from a film I saw, where a man is looking at a blue flower, which I remember as a blue rose.   Steve Latham   The image has stayed with me, throughout my life: a picture disconnected from anything else, anything […]