1819 was a miraculous year for English poetry. John Keats wrote six odes, the first five were written in the Spring, the sixth, in the Autumn. These six poems (On a Grecian Urn, On Indolence, On Melancholy, to a Nightingale, to Pscyhe and To Autumn) have become a foundation stone of English Literature.…

Photograph Inge Colijn by Inge Colijn Geneva Camp in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is an old urban refugee camp. With the 1947 partition of India many Urdu speaking Biharis moved to then East-Pakistan. Those who supported the West Pakistan army during the 1971 Liberation War remained stranded here as stateless communities when East-Pakistan became Bangladesh. Between…

Courage. Prompted by Phil Hall X by Phil Hall I have always loved the Tarot since the age of 17, when I bought a pack in a Brighton New Age shop in 1977, and I can throw a pretty good set of cards. After use comes understanding. The set I used to scry the…

Darryl F. Zanuck. J. (1943) Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, Public Domain Darryl Zanuck and Fox by Norman B. Schwartz Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931) was not only the Wizard of Menlo Park, the inventor supreme of the incandescent light bulb and the phonograph. He was also the quintessential capitalist. Not only could he…

Spam has a reputation so durable it can survive a frying pan, a joke, a war and a supermarket aisle without so much as loosening its tie. Photograph Kent Ng Pexels Sweet and savoury hallucinations people mock, fear, hide, inherit, sneer at and eat anyway by Arun Kapil Some foods never enter the kitchen…

My Hat. Photograph Phil Hall by Phil Hall We’re talking about religion and the imagination. Some of the wildest thoughts human beings have ever had have been religious thoughts. Some of the most extravagant love stories, like the Song of Solomon—are religious. Some of the most apocalyptic science fiction ever written came from religious…

Oil wealth in the Gulf represents hope for the developing world. Photograph Tom Fisk. Destroying and killing nationalist, sovereign opposition to imperialism is the métier of capitalism by Phil Hall The destruction of alternative sources of energy, and of infrastructure in Central Asia, the Gulf and the Middle East represents the logical conclusion of…

Photograph Dmitryshein and Bristol Greens, Wikimedia Commons Polanski and Mamdani are no counterbalance to a monstrous system of global wealth extraction by Richard Steinhardt Zohran Mamdani and Zack Polanski are trying to get into your knickers. In the 1980s, something called “The New Man” emerged as a cultural phenomenon. Born partly in response to…

“The word Chechnya alone was enough to provoke despair.” By Richard Steinhardt Parallels are often drawn between Napoleon’s invasion of Tsarist Russia and Hitler’s invasion of the USSR when the point is made that the results of invading Russia through the Ukraine, directly or through proxies, are disastrous. However, the correct analogy to be…

Photograph Francesco Ungaro by Phil Hall The Enochian tradition is based on the 16th-century works of Dr. John Dee (1527–1608) and his Irish scryer, Edward Kelley. It is named after the biblical patriarch Enoch, who “walked with God.” Dee and Kelley claimed to have been given a language and an outlook by angels. Dr.…