- it really disinclines me to reading further when an article begins with a historical comparison at which I go 'well, no' and 'what about...':
the Aids pandemic, which has perhaps caused more shock and anguish than any other infectious disease since the black death

and 'you really haven't thought through the history of epidemics, have you?'

As in ( Read more... )

My attention has been drawn to this article about OMG getting to 50 and growing old, which I'm actually finding quite annoying.

How many people can say, following a fall which (honestly) could surely have happened to anybody at anytime, like the moped/pedestrian crossing thing that happened to me in my 50s:
I’ve never regained an absolute trust ( Read more... )

Apparently - I haven't saved link, which was to op-ed column about rather than the source - someone has just committed another It's All In The Genes book.

In which I am given to understand that a claim is made about the British aristocracy having large families...

Which is deeply curious, because Sir Francis Galton, founder of the 'science' of ( Read more... )

I've finally taken a look at that How Privileged Are You questionnaire, and I am -

Wow, very US-themed. (so many questions that are pretty much meaningless in UK context.)

So, particular generation.

Such, lack of international travel except possibly in a group.

When I was traveling in South Asia, back when, I was oft at that given moment the only ( Read more... )

Does anyone who actually reads think that British readers and writers 'ignore their Imperial heritage'?

British readers and writers need to embrace their colonial past

There was a point when reading that article when I wondered if MJ Carter had actually read anything published later than 1930, apart from postcolonial theory. We are also not ( Read more... )

[A]University of Cambridge professor of modern German and comparative culture, Andrew Webber, branded the acclaimed literary novelist Philip Hensher "priggish and ungracious" for refusing to write an introduction to the academic's forthcoming guide to Berlin literature for free.

I do absolutely get this thing where people who make a living from ( Read more... )

Another dire idea in approximately the same category as 'cosy sitcom about funny suffragettes': Cecil, George and Bert, the only young men left in the sleepy provincial village Rittle-On-Sea who are either too scared, morally challenged or physically disfigured to sacrifice their lives for the great war. Do we feel that this merits being mentioned ( Read more... )

Richard J Evans on history, it's all more complicated and the national curriculum.

The problems of re-enactment as a form of historical research (though I can see that it has its virtues if integrated into a broader framework).

O dear: there was an article about the research in this book in the Weekend magazine last week, and, honestly, my dearios ( Read more... )

I'm not talking about actual table manners here, but about that subtextual claim I was referencing yesterday that proper civilised eating takes place with all the household (except for the servants?) round the table, and engaging in suitable conversation - presumably the mess rules apply of no politics, religion, or sex, talk. Possibly with grace ( Read more... )

Reading a review of a book on the evils of sugar, I am less than impressed when the reviewer, though conceding that food manufacturers adding vast amounts of sugar to processed foods is a major issue, goes off into a diatribe about the eating habits of 'many British households' (yes, I'd like to have cites for that survey, wouldn't you?).

He claims ( Read more... )