Like, in previous years I am sure the advice columns were all 'how do I deal with compulsory getting together with FAAAAMILY for trad celebration angst angst angst' -
- but on reflection, probably the people who were heavying them into obligation to get together with FAAAAMILY for trad celebration are the ones who are blithely going ahead and ( Read more... )

Maybe it's a cultural thing, but I think even Ibsen his own self might have felt that some pause for reflection and assimilation of traumatic event was appropriate before rushing out with his Big Statement Drama on the Utøya massacre. Or at least might have filtered it through some different prism.

It was a horrendous event, particularly so as ( Read more... )

I cannot find 'The Week in Books' from the Guardian Review for today in the online edition. It has an entry which I find irk-making, a report on 'a combined British Academy discussion and book launch last week' on 'End of Empire and the British Novel'. Apparently there is an edited collection of this title, and the co-editor turned on the 'j'accuse ( Read more... )

My beloved G B Stern was so very right in her apercu that 'Wednesday Fortnight always comes':
I had accepted by telephone an invitation to do something or other which I did not want to do, or go to some place where I did not want to go--I forget.... I had accepted because it was far enough ahead that it seemed the path of least resistance to say ( Read more... )

Don't normally have much time for David Aaronovitch in The Guardian, but I did rather like this, at the foot of his column today:
Poppy-wearing is fine by me. People now make what they want out of such institutions, choosing for themselves whether they are commemorating our glorious dead, or mourning the futility of war. It is a bit like wearing a ( Read more... )