Imagine you are at the seaside. Sunlight is hitting the surface of the ocean. Some wavelengths of light pass into the water, while others bounce off it, scattering in all directions. A tiny fraction of reflected light happens to reach …
Dreams can save us
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” wrote Joan Didion. She was referring to our conscious selves, during waking hours, but our unconscious minds also tell us stories so that we can live. This involuntary, instinctive, subconscious storytelling occurs …
All revolutionaries are selfish
I was recommended Germinal, Zola’s masterpiece about the mining strikes in northern France in 1866, by a friend, a writer I admire and respect. We were talking about the temptation to stay in our narrative comfort zones, to continually write …
Why is Russia obsessed with slavery?
There’s nothing wrong with being cautious. Since 1709, when Peter the Great routed the troops of Swedish King Charles XII at Poltava, smack-dab in the middle of modern-day Ukraine, Europeans have understood Russia as a military threat. Never has this …
The progressive puritans will fail
Fun has always carried a little bit of danger in its back pocket: there’s something radical, even anarchical, about having too much of it. “We were just having some fun” could be the thing you say to the neighbours who’ve …
Welcome to Philip K. Dick’s dystopia
Philip K. Dick, whose novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? inspired the film Blade Runner, did not live to enjoy his Hollywood success. He died on March 2, 1982, three months before the film was released.
In the years …
The problem with being uptight
It’s surely unfair to expect a brilliant scientist to also be a brilliant author. Some of the most valuable books I’ve encountered in my research have been the dreariest to read: repetitive, dense and joyless prose turning what could have …
The last American aristocrat
Not long after the Trump election I was invited to a dinner party of the sort I’d only recently learned existed. Here’s how it goes. The host is wealthy, as are half the guests, and the other half are intellectuals …
British Rail must take back control
If Brexit taught us anything, it’s that a sentimental yearning for the past underpins Global Britain’s sense of its own adorable character. And the brilliant thing about Great British Nostalgia is that it belongs to all of us — not …
Will we escape our age of failure?
A little over a year ago, as inflation in the United States spiked to an alarming 5.4%, the nation watched on as President Biden addressed the public’s concerns from a White House lectern. His remarks in response to a reporter’s …
Can depression be cured?
Was depression invented by the American elites in the Nineties? Since Prozac was introduced in 1987, it is true that the “major depressive disorder” — coined in the medical literature of the Eighties as a stop-gap measure — has taken …
The timeless beauty of Novalis
Penelope Fitzgerald, until her death in 2000, was, by a country mile, my favourite living author. Her novels offer a view of life the wisdom of which is belied by the physical slenderness of the texts. I love all her …
The West needs to grow up
The first modern revolution was neither French nor American, but English. Long before Louis XVI went to the Guillotine, or Washington crossed the Delaware, the country which later became renowned for stiff upper lips and proper tea went to war …
The fate of Europe lies in the steppes
On the road between the frontline cities of Sloviansk and Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, three stone statues stand mutely by the side of the road, observing the coming and going of military traffic with impassive detachment. Known as …
