Before the street, people who were not family socialised in a village square, a town’s marketplace or, strictly for the elite, a court or castle. Sean Sheehan Streets as we know them came with industrialisation, becoming a vital public space and by the early 20th century street […]
Culture
Pain through the eyes of a Kobane refugee
“Displaced” … This word is used to encompass the lives of those caught up in one of the worst humanitarian crises this century. People are doing everything they can to continue their daily lives as if there were no war. The Prisma’ memoirs. Cristina Lago In September […]
The cost of Empire
The end of the Ottoman Empire, stretching from the Balkans to the Arabian peninsula, remains in the shade of other deceased empires – ancient Rome’s epoch-defining downfall; Tsarism’s out-of-the-blue collapse; the gradual dismemberment of the British Empire – but this book corrects the imbalance. Sean Sheehan Written with understated […]
Portugal, the forgotten memories of colonialism
Debunking the belief that the Portuguese were more benign colonizers than the Spanish in South America, Ariel de Bigault points out that Brazil is one of the few countries that was totally based on slavery. Trafficking: tearing people out of their homelands to force them to work in another continent was invented by the Portuguese.
Good reactionary art
Perry Anderson is a high-powered analyst of historical and political currents and it would be amiss to go through life without reading him but while “Different speeds, same furies” is not typical of his concerns it is characteristic in its intellectual prowess, clinical dissection and coolness of tone. […]
















