Ever since I stumbled on Sonnet Mondal’s poems, I have been captivated by their stunning simplicity and words evoking a magical experience. That he achieves this consistently is breath-taking. In this occasional series, our aim is to connect you with some of these exceptional beauties I come across. These are rare, as they don’t…

Possible development of Eric Laithwaite’s ideas for an inertial drive. X generated Eric Laithwaite’s Inertial Propulsion Technology is Hidden in Plain Sight by Phil Hall One of the things that happens if you are recruited into intelligence is that, if anyone asks, you must deny that you were recruited. If people know you went…

Dresden after it was bombed in 1945 by the USA and the UK This is about the future of Europe, about the future of the UK. That’s what WE give a damn about by Richard Steinhardt My father once explained something to me. He said, “You see, we always think these people, these capitalists…

Food is hand, heat, knife, pan, steam, argument, silence, mess, smell, timing, sharing. Photograph Arun Kapil Syringes, powders, protein pots and the stubborn joy of the table by Arun Kapil I am a trolley-snooper. Kind of. There, I’ve said it. I do it in Lidl, Waitrose, Tesco, SuperValu, airport Boots, motorway service stations, anywhere…

Kennedy’s motorcade through Cork, Ireland. Photograph Robert LeRoy Knudsen , U.S. National Archives and Records Administration J. F. Kennedy, Reluctant Heir by Norman B. Schwartz When John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was twenty-seven and in a military hospital in Arizona, an airplane explosion over England killed his elder brother, Joseph Kennedy…

Photograph Bitan Chakraborty Kiriti Sengupta divides his time between New Delhi and Santiniketan, the university town Rabindranath Tagore founded as a centre for learning and the arts, and this dual base anchors his writing in both contemporary Indian life and Bengal’s literary heritage. As a translator of Tagore and other Bengali poets, Sengupta has…

Nochebuena Photograph Jeffry Surianto by Phil Hall My three children are bathed, and clean in their pyjamas. In my hand a precious book from my partner’s collection of children’s picture books. Now, that the children have grown up the books are carefully boxed up and put away. But then there was the sweet smell…

Photograph Phili Mills by Phili Mills The Cornish were already settled in Britain’s far west peninsular where they were extracting and trading in metal from the Bronze age. The Cornish language is a Brittonic language, which includes Welsh and Breton and is part of the Celtic language family. It was spoken across Britain south…

Mount Kissavos viewed from Pineios bridge in Larissa. Photograph Konstantinos Agiannis Dimitris P. Kraniotis was born in 1966 and grew up in Stomio, Larissa, Greece where Hippocrates himself spent his later years living and practicing medicine. Dimitris followed in the footsteps of Hippocrates. After studying Medicine at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, he established his medical practice…

Photograph Tina Bexson by Tina Bexson I decided to run extra early. Just rats and foxes to eye me from the sidelines, penetrating the air with their activities of the night. And like a cat burglar at his most productive I prowled the streets with omnipotence. My darkly clothed lithe frame, and wide stride,…

Photograph Omar Ramadan by Ulises Paniagua I miss football: the old kind, the real kind. The era of the World Cups we witnessed is fading into the distance, overtaken by a paradigm that erupted, ferociously, at Qatar 2022. The gilded splendour that adorned that sheikh-laden spectacle, the gold of the television ads, of social…