Category Archives: Nationalism

“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

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Michael Powell and the National Myth

1980: Exile  Michael Powell began writing his autobiography A Life in Movies during a period of professional exile from England — in 1980, while teaching film students at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. “I love England,” he wrote:  I have … Continue reading

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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

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Archives of Pain: Kanan Makiya and the Politics of Iraq

That’s the hope I still have for Iraq — that it can rediscover its destiny as a richly various and pluralistic society, a meeting ground of all sorts of creeds and groupings. That’s the hope that sustains me. Kanan Makiya, … Continue reading

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On the Legacy of George L. Mosse

Past history is always contemporary. George L. Mosse, The Nationalisation of the Masses In Confronting History, his posthumously published memoir, George L. Mosse recalled the occupation of Mossehaus, the headquarters of Rudolf Mosse’s German publishing empire, during the Spartacist Uprising … Continue reading

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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 | 4 Comments