July 14, 2021
Susan Bernofsky— In the spring of 1909, thirty-one-year-old novelist Robert Walser, then living in Berlin, saw a performance by one of the greatest ballet dancers of the twentieth century. Anna… READ MORE
July 13, 2021
Jonathan Petropoulos— At the start of my sabbatical in the summer of 2000, I was living in Munich, making it easier to contact Lohse. I had his telephone number and… READ MORE
July 12, 2021
Paul Gillingham— A well-known Colombian novelist once talked about how sad he was when he killed off a character. Historians never face that problem; our characters die of their own… READ MORE
July 7, 2021
R.J.B. Bosworth— The far-right party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) evokes the national anthem, written in 1847 as a theme tune of Italy’s unification in the Risorgimento. In October 1946,… READ MORE
July 6, 2021
Andrew Wilson— In one of the north-western corners of Rus lay the town of Polatsk, on the western river Dzvina. In those days, rivers made nations. They set trade and… READ MORE
July 5, 2021
John Shovlin— For centuries, empires protected the commercial activity of Europeans overseas and secured their access to crucial resources and markets. Commerce requires protection to flourish, officials and merchants understood…. READ MORE
July 1, 2021
Feargal Cochrane— It is difficult to overstate the chaos, confusion and emotion that accompanied the creation of Northern Ireland in 1921. It was not a smooth transition. At the stroke… READ MORE
June 30, 2021
Harry Rée— What was it that made an Englishman want to parachute into occupied France, in civilian clothes? It was understandable for Frenchmen: they naturally wanted to get back home… READ MORE
June 29, 2021
Dr. Toby Musgrave— Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820) was only twenty-five years old when in 1768 he convinced both the prestigious Royal Society and the bureaucratic Admiralty that he should join… READ MORE
A Conversation with Trudier Harris on Bigger: A Literary Life