This is an appropriate time to get out on the streets of London looking at its trees. An activity to be enjoyed solo or with a friend – a face mask will not usually be necessary – it opens a window on the extraordinary diversity of trees to be found […]

Two of these books urge young readers to be outside their homes, discovering and enjoying the natural world around them. The other two celebrate self-esteem and black history.   Sean Sheehan   “I ate Sunshine for breakfast” (7-14 year-olds) justifies its glorious title by bringing botany alive. Informative text and […]

Trump rose to power in 2016 on waves of racism and nationalism that have always flowed in the American psyche. As the next election looms, he seeks to ride the same currents and, once again, the Democrats are beached on the sand with a figurehead who may not be able […]

If science can describe reality as it ‘really is’, any such description would be transcendental, independent of our observations and partial perspectives.   Sean Sheehan   The philosopher Meillassoux uses fossils as proof that we can access a reality  unrelated to human knowledge. We are grounded in historically-determined horizons of […]

The British Empire, so secure when Nona Baker, a young Englishwoman, sails to Malaya in the 1930s, was in tatters when she returned home in 1945.   Sean Sheehan   Her story of those tumultuous years, “Pai Naa”, mirroring the contours of war, empire and colonization, is a heartfelt tale, […]