Month: June 2010
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The Uncoupling of Jesus Christ.
Hope is a long leash drawn in slowly. Wendy Cope, After Prague I came to The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ well disposed to Philip Pullman, and I left with my illusions intact. Pullman tackles the central conundrum of the Christianity: how did the oh-so-radical Jesus leave the oh-so-conservative church as his sole legacy? Pullman’s…
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The Would-be Medici.
It is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin, that corruption’s gangrene has spread too far to be healed by our sceptre, that the triumph over enemy sovereigns has made us the heirs of their long undoing. …
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The Step Between.
“When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” The life and times of the person Cromwell. Umberto Eco tells us there is a fate that links the historical novel to medieval topics. He explains that this is because many of our contemporary conflicts can be traced to the tumultuous, and ongoing, break…
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A Whiff of Scandal.
An edited version of this post appeared in OpenDemocracy, here. Five years ago, the Tamil actress Khushboo said something innocuous in the course of an interview. She expressed surprise that adult men expected virgin brides, and went on to say that it was prudent to use protection while one does the big nasty. I gather…
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Pie in the Sky
I am the sort of person that prefers time divided up into centuries. All the same, sometimes 1911 seems long ago and a whole world away. Last night, I was lucky enough to encounter Joe Hill before the blues. The Preacher and the Slave Long-haired preachers come out every night, Try to tell you what’s…