Contra that notion that the advent of energy-efficient lightbulbs that do not come on just like that, bing!, but light up gradually will completely eliminate the whole lightbulb metaphor and visual convention, I have just had a moment to which gradual enlightenment totally applies.

I have been asked to do a keynote at a conference next spring, and ( Read more... )

Yesterday evening we ate at El Pirata Tapas in Mayfair (prior to seeing A Royal Affair* at the Curzon Mayfair), which despite that location is extremely reasonably-priced, and the food good, though not quite in the same class as Navarro's, which remains my standard of comparison for tapas.

Anyway, one of the dishes on offer was elvers (baby eels) ( Read more... )

(Though personally I think that Tennyson's position on apes and tigers is dubious at best, his knowledge of animal ethology probably being up there with his understanding of railway lines.*).

Howsumdever, I was intrigued by this review in today's Guardian Review, of Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History ( Read more... )

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Somewhere in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon Rebecca West has a passage (it's in Volume 1 of the 2 volume edition, of which my copy is mysteriously not where I thought it was, next to Vol 2, so I'm quoting from memory), that women think that one day something will happen after which life will be entirely agreeable, while men think that one day they will ( Read more... )

I am thrilled to see this very positive review of Susan Williams' Colour Bar: the Triumph of Seretse Khama and his Nation, as author is a friend of mine. I missed the launch as I was in US at the time - I have really bad luck with her launches, for the one for her previous book I got stuck when the power failed for the entire London underground ( Read more... )

Article by Barbara Taylor on Enlightenment women, who have previously, are we surprised, not been part of the narrative of The Enlightenment and Its Big Male Thinkers.

And Nicola Norton on women who delay motherhood and the self-appointed fertility police
For the first time ever, the fertility rate of women aged 30-34 has overtaken that of women ( Read more... )