The plumb-pudding in danger, or, State Epicures taking un Petit Souper, by James Gillray, 1805 STUART MILLSON says imperialism is intrinsic Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating, Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them, Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations... Walt Whitman (The Leaves of Grass) In the heart of…
ALEX WOODCOCK-CLARKE says No Time To Die may have become too woke to live Thrown off buildings, cliffs and dams, out of planes in their death spiral, into pools full of sharks, and once into bed with Grace Jones dressed as Satan. Assaulted by giants with steel teeth and midgets in bowler hats. James Bond…
Genesis in 1973 (Steve Hackett second from right) A Genesis in my Bed, Steve Hackett, Wymer Publishing, 208 pages, £13.99 CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD enjoys the modest memoirs of a guitarist who has little to be modest about While the likes of the capital’s O2 Arena brace themselves for the invasion of the Phil Collins version of…
LENNART SVENSSON is best known for his biography of Ernst Jünger (Ernst Jünger: A Portrait, 2014) and his philosophy of life, Actionism (2017). He has also published novels such as Redeeming Lucifer (2017) and he's currently working on new projects, both fact and fiction. He was born in Sweden in 1965 and still lives there.…
IVAN HEAD was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1953. Participation in Speech and Drama led him to read, learn and recite poetry from an early age. He has been writing poetry for most of his adult life and regularly reviews poetry publications for Quadrant, the Australian journal founded by James McAuley in the mid-1950s.…
Not much is known about MARCUS BALES except he lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, and his work has not appeared in Poetry or The New Yorker. His latest book is 51 Poems; reviews and information at http://tinyurl.com/jo8ek3r Paris and Helen Perhaps the April sun shone every day And I do not remember. Did…
STODDARD MARTIN traces the connections and contrasts of two utterly different Americans George Santayana and Ezra Pound would have known of one another for decades before they ever corresponded, let alone met. Twenty-two years apart in age, they were at least a generation distant in sensibility and more than that in temperament. But Santayana was…
ROBERT HENDERSON warns of the unprecedented challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence The attention of the world is currently fixed on coronavirus, but there is another far more serious danger hurtling towards us, in the shape of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics. Both are advancing rapidly. Probably within the lifetime of most people now living – quite possibly in the next…
Starship Troopers The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, Farah Mendlesohn, Unbound, 2019, hardback £20 CHRISTOPHER G. NUTTALL reviews an unusually fair appraisal of a sci-fi pioneer “Over a period of twenty years, Heinlein’s attitudes had shifted noticeably. Were one to include the twenty years previous to that, the word would be ‘dramatically’. This was…
Lake George, by John William Casilear, 1857 MARK BRENNAN’s move to the Hudson Valley helped him come to terms with Covid – and much else My wife and I rounded up our two dogs on March 13th and, in a mild panic, abandoned Manhattan for our house in New York’s Hudson Valley. I shouted a…