Some thoughts on Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (1935)

March 2025

Why isn’t everyone talking about this book? Why hasn’t it been made into a film? Sinclair Lewis’s novel takes aspects of Hitler’s rise and applies them to an American scenario…

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Apologies for history? Fact and Fiction

June 2022

The modern practice of apologising for history has its supporters and detractors. The issue shows how history is still at work in the present. The passions aroused and the partisan approaches taken indicate that in some respects we are no more sophisticated than our medieval forbears…

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The Holy Maid of Stockholm

July 2019

Has anyone else been struck by the iconography going on around Greta Thunberg? Her image, often presented as a facial close-up, in the style of an icon, commands attention…

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Some Notes on The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

June 2018

Reading this book is like looking through a glass darkly, you must be patient as, little by little, the initial situation is put into context. A huge historical dislocation has happened very quickly…