Required reading
Distrust of a religious minority, limited interest in international trade, a desire to protect a national identity: this is early modern Japan, a feudal backwater that had cut itself off from the world.
Whether fleeing civil war in Syria, or political oppression in Africa, the right-wing media has met refugees with scorn. This is in contrast to a past of English people both welcoming and being refugees.
950 years ago, the Battle of Hastings changed England forever, ending a system of government, a language, and a literary canon. All this was based on the lies of the ambitious William the Conqueror.
Claudius the God asks us whether it is right to support Claudius as he descends into despotism – not just for the characters, but for ourselves as readers – as illustrated by a fable about the choices of a dog.
In the 1930s, Germany threatened to be a football power, finishing third in the 1934 World Cup. Then, they had a larger country from which to pick talent – an eastern province with a lost football history.
I, CLAUDIUS abounds with villains: there is the insane, incestuous Caligula; the sadistic Tiberius; and the power hungry Sejanus, but theContinue Reading
The increasingly autocratic President of Turkey has been compared to an Ottoman Sultan, but in the relationship with his NATO allies Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is closer to a much older tradition.
