Transmission of Shakespeare’s legacy 400 years ago

Chris Laoutaris’s survey of the scene around the landmark publication the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s works, paints a lively picture of multiple operations threatening to win over the competition.  Even with the Bard , commercial interests were at least as important as aesthetic and cultural ones.  In Shakespeare’s era there was no separation between painting, publishing and selling books. The captial’s trade on the churchyard of Old St. Paul’s, with preachers orating from the open air pulpit. The true story of how the First Folio creators made “Shakespeare”, as 2023, marks the 400th anniversary of Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, … Continue reading Transmission of Shakespeare’s legacy 400 years ago

Encounters in the history of colonialism

In 1616, Thomas Roe arrived in India as James 1’s ambassador to the Mughal Empire, the English barely had a toehold in the subcontinent. Their understanding of South Asian trade and India was sketchy at best, and , to the Mughals, they were minor players on a very large stage. Roe was representing a kingdom that was beset by financial woes and deeply conflicted about its identity as a united Great Britain under Stuart monarchy. The court he entered in India was very wealthy and cultured, its dominion widely considered to be the greatest and richest empires of the world. … Continue reading Encounters in the history of colonialism

Partial eclipse

Holding the Baby set out to understand why we still treat early parenthood as an individual slog rather than a shared cultural responsibility. Tracing her own journey to the nadir of sleeplessness via social retreat and murderous rage, Frizzell draws on the latest research to explore amid practical guides on raising children, literary explorations about the maternal experience, deep data dives and so call “mom-oirs”. Vogue columnist, Frizzell  describes the earliest stage of motherhood, when your time, identity, body and sense of self is absorbed by the needs of your baby, as “the partial eclipse”. She writes honestly and clearly … Continue reading Partial eclipse

AI and Technology gone Astray

The residents of Garrett Island off the coast of Massachusetts are part of a visionary experiment and a grand PR exercise, as they have all give up conventional cars in favour of a fleet of driverless vehicles called Arrivals, in Linwood Barclay’s international bestselling crime thriller,  Look Both Ways with characterization, plot and the killer twist,  a social comedy, as new technology of self-driving cars brings unease. Are they safe without a human at the wheel. Everything was fine until the CEO of a rival manufacturer, victim of cut throat corporate shenanigans that bankrupted him, introduces software into the Arrivals’ … Continue reading AI and Technology gone Astray

Revealing of Eliot’s secret love

Winner of Nobel Prize in Literature, T.S. Eliot one of the greatest  English-language poets of his generation, protected his privacy while publicly associated with three women: two wives, and a church-going companion. This presentation concealed a life-long love for an American Emily Hale, a drama teacher  to whom he wrote and later suppressed over a thousand letters. Hale was the source of “memory and desire” in the Waste Land,  she is the Hyacinth Girl. His other classic poem is Four Quartets and his essays influenced a school of literary criticism. Raised in St. Louis, shaped by his youth in Boston, … Continue reading Revealing of Eliot’s secret love

World Book Day

World Book Day is here on 2nd March 2023, as books stimulate imagination, and on this day books should promote reading for pleasure, offering every child and young person the opportunity to have a book of their own. World Book Day was first celebrated in the UK and Ireland over 25 years ago, the day has grown to become an essential calendar fixture for schools and communities. World Book Day also provides an excellent opportunity to focus on reading for pleasure, supporting children’s autonomy in book choice and instilling a habit of reading that brings wide range of knowledge and … Continue reading World Book Day

Misinformation infects our minds -altering our beliefs

From fake news to conspiracy theories , from pandemics to politics, misinformation may be the defining problem of our era.  Like a virus, misinformation infects our minds -altering our beliefs and replicating at astonishing rates. Once the virus takes hold, our primary strategies of fact-checking and debunking are an insufficient cure. There are plenty of people trying to fool us these days and plenty of people happy to be fooled. Professor of psychology at Cambridge, Sander van der Linden, has been studying why are we susceptible to misinformation for years, and promises to build immunity to misinformation. Linden describes how … Continue reading Misinformation infects our minds -altering our beliefs