Today's visit to the National Gallery to see the Bellini and the East exhibition coincided with the British Left's annual show of tomfoolery in Trafalgar Square. One group was swishing some very toney black-and-red flags - in honour, I presume, of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of Non-agression. This seemed very likely as the CPGB-ML stand was backed by a ( Read more... )

A while ago the GF asked me one of her typically astute but annoying questions that cause me no end of flummoxing. She'd been reading Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, and (rightly) wondered why the Ottoman miniaturists at the heart of the story weren't all being executed for transgressing Islamic proscriptions on the rendition of animate objects (i.e ( Read more... )

The Sauna Gang. Sounds seedy, doesn't it? like an early '80s gayploitation flick, such as William Friedkin's Cruising (1980), which many cineastes still regard as the acme of Al Pacino's acting career (dig those chaps!). Unfortunately, it's nothing quite so salubrious - just the name given to the gaggle of Turkish generals, politicians and ( Read more... )

Last night I had dinner with some of the Neweurasia crew at Sofra, a Turkish restaurant in Covent Garden. I've been here a couple of times before, the food's usually been pretty good, and this time was no exception. The meze was great, and my kofte was delightfully spicy. However, having already pigged out on bread and hummous, there was no room ( Read more... )

The TLS has a couple of articles well worth perusing: an analysis of the recent trial of Orhan Pamuk; and a review of a biography of Musa Sanib (Iurii Shanibov) a would-be Circassian nationalist.

The case against Pamuk may have been dropped (see here and here at Blogrel - thanks Katy & Hovakim - for good round ups) but now a whole new tranche of ( Read more... )