The outbreak of revolutions in 1848 across Europe (England and Russia were notable exceptions) was a sequel to the French revolution of 1789. Sean Sheehan There was a new class on the block, the proletariat, and it inaugurated a new era: class war. There are no known leaders […]
Book reviews
Other people’s emotional pain
“The discomfort of evening” is a story set in the Dutch countryside where a ten-year old child, Jas, is struggling to cope with the crisis that has engulfed her family. Sean Sheehan After the death of a brother in a skating accident, the grief has left her parents, […]
Misrepresenting women in Greek mythology
The Amazons, an all-female, barbarian tribe of mythological warriors, fascinated the ancient Greeks. Ubiquitous in art –only representations of Heracles appear more often on vase paintings– they appear battling with Greeks in sculpted scenes on classical temples. Sean Sheehan Natalie Haynes, in “Pandora’s jar”, wonders why a male-dominated […]
The big questions about material reality
Listening to a programme about the theoretical physicist Paul Dirac is convincing evidence that most of us don’t understand the fundamentals of our physical universe. Sean Sheehan Other evidence is the unquenchable thirst for books like Frank Wilczek’s “Fundamentals: ten keys to reality” by those who do. Some […]
Bickering nuns and broken spies
Rejecting the privilege and conformity of her background, Sylvia Townsend Warner shared communist beliefs with her lover, Valentine Ackland, and the two women worked for the Red Cross during the Spanish Civil War. Sean Sheehan This is a far cry from her 1948 novel, “The corner that held […]
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