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Recent Posts
- “A Swarm of Ghosts”: Anna Akhmatova’s Russia
- Michael Powell and the National Myth
- Saddam and his Enemies
- Ann Clwyd, 1937-2023
- Italy Needs Me: The Life and Death of Silvio Berlusconi
- ‘Time Reigns’: Vernon Watkins and Wales
- Archives of Pain: Kanan Makiya and the Politics of Iraq
- Roman Tragedy: Lucio Fulci’s ‘Beatrice Cenci’
- On the Legacy of George L. Mosse
- Slaughter Commissions: Crime Films and the Italian Crisis
- ‘Everyone Middle East is here’: The British in Iraq
- The Writing Racket: Balzac’s ‘Lost Illusions’
- On Marvin Gaye’s ‘Midnight Love’
- The Queen of Condé Nast
- American Carnage: Sarah Palin’s Revolution
- ‘The Town Blazing Scarlet’: Swansea’s Blitz
- The Letwin Amendment
- The Jews in Fascist Italy
- The Haunting of Yulia
- Ezra Pound & Salò
- The Passion of Yulia Tymoshenko
- GooGoosha’s Golden Globe
Archives
Category Archives: Literature
“A Swarm of Ghosts”: Anna Akhmatova’s Russia
I: The October Epoch There is no present — I am proud of the past And I suffocate from such shame. Reading Anna Akhmatova’s first two collections of verse it can be difficult to recognise the poet who would later … Continue reading
Posted in Communism, Literature, Nationalism, Poetry, Russia
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‘Time Reigns’: Vernon Watkins and Wales
I: ‘Welshness’ and Poetic Identity Vernon Watkins did not measure success in terms of book sales or critical acclaim. He was not indifferent to literary trends or the demands of the book trade, but maintained an uncompromising, if polite, disdain … Continue reading
Posted in Literature, Nationalism, Poetry, Wales
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The Writing Racket: Balzac’s ‘Lost Illusions’
During his lifetime, Balzac’s debts were as famous as his novels and more widely discussed than his love affairs. Money was the great unifying subject of La Comédie humaine and the legal and moral dimensions of debt were an important … Continue reading
Posted in France, Literature
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‘The Town Blazing Scarlet’: Swansea’s Blitz
They take you up on Townhill at night to see the furnaces in the pit of the town blazing scarlet, and the parallel crossing lines of lamps…If it is always a city of dreadful day, it is for the moment … Continue reading
Posted in Literature, Nationalism, Poetry, Wales
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The Jews in Fascist Italy
And he would shake his head, with the expression of someone who, should they wish to, could even understand such subtleties and complications, but who is just not minded to. Such tiny fine discriminations, intriguing and engaging as they might … Continue reading
Posted in Fascism, Film, Italy, Literature, Politics
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Ezra Pound & Salò
I want to go on fighting. Canto 72 In 1948, the year James Laughlin published The Pisan Cantos, Ezra Pound remained incarcerated in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, a Federal Government asylum in Washington, having been found mentally unfit to stand trial … Continue reading
Posted in Fascism, Italy, Literature, Poetry
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