John Foster / 24 Sep 2022
Can’t Forget Fascism
Mussolini in Myth and Memory, by Paul Corner
If the spin is correct, Giorgia Meloni won Italy’s election already.(...)
Books
Charlie Bertsch / 13 Jul 2022
Imagining a Different Future
Reconsidering Susan Sontag, Part II
Even as Susan Sontag’s celebrity has dimmed, the time she spent in battered Sarajevo in the 1990s, directing Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot remains a touchstone in discussions of intellectual engagement.(...)
John Foster / 24 Jun 2022
The Snake in Lion Drag
Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes, by Tariq Ali
Since his student days in the Oxford Union in the 1960s, Tariq Ali has been a blunt teller of truths, not unduly concerned with the feelings of those who think otherwise.(...)
The Battleground / 13 Jun 2022
End of An Era
The Battleground’s Summer Books List
“No more blood.” The graffiti has been there for as long as I can remember.(...)
Charlie Bertsch / 08 Jun 2022
Switzerland or Bust
Return to Magic Mountain
Ever since I finished Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, I have been trying to find a way of explaining why it’s worth reading that prioritises the words on the page rather than my idiosyncratic response to them. (...)
Charlie Bertsch / 18 May 2022
The Thomas Mann Mountain
Learning to Read Again
As I made my way up the trail, the late-afternoon sun temporarily muted by clouds, I suddenly realised how strange my situation was.(...)
John Foster / 10 Dec 2021
Postmodern Means Today
Everything, All the Time, Everywhere, by Stuart Jeffries
It’s a problem that won’t go away. Separating postmodernism from socialism, particularly the “cultural Marxists” of the Frankfurt School, remains extremely difficult.(...)