Saint Denis was beheaded on the hill looming over northern Paris now known as Montmartre. The legend is that he picked up his own head and carried… Read more “Thumbs up for the real digital revolution”
Category: Books
Forgive, but don’t forget
This is an excerpt.
Little bangs and big bucks
You know you’ve hit your mid-40s when histories of ‘your’ decade start to fill the bookshelves. Writers are always nostalgic for their youth and thirty years seems… Read more “Little bangs and big bucks”
What nature of beast?
It was, I think, Martin Rowson, perhaps our most ghoulish cartoonist, who first asked whether the coalition was evil, useless or both. Faced with David Cameron’s eccentric… Read more “What nature of beast?”
Can’t get no satisfaction?
‘You can’t always get what you want,’ sang Mick Jagger in 1969. ‘But if you try sometimes, well you might just find, you get what you need.’… Read more “Can’t get no satisfaction?”
Baudelaire and our destructive obsession with change
‘The shape of a city changes too fast, alas!, for the heart of mortal man,’ wrote Charles Baudelaire in one of his most famous poems, The Swan.… Read more “Baudelaire and our destructive obsession with change”
The strange afterlife of François Mitterrand
François Mitterrand, French president between 1981 and 1995, died 16 years ago. Well, so they said. But turn on French radio or TV, look around a bookshop,… Read more “The strange afterlife of François Mitterrand”
Who is François Hollande?
This is a stand first.
Creative catastrophizing
The last year has seen a glut of books on economics for general readers, feeding off the fears most people have about their future in the global… Read more “Creative catastrophizing”
The wisdom of Michel Serres
I have to admit that I’d never heard of Michel Serres until a couple of weeks ago, when I read this interview in Le Monde Magazine (6 November). Serres is a… Read more “The wisdom of Michel Serres”