Happy 66th Birthday one of the sources of my heart Flawed though you may be (“Fantastically corrupt” didn’t offend you For you knew it was true). You’ve held yourself together These 66 years. Your independence was peaceful Your coups and…
Welcome traveller. Shake the dust off your boots. Come to our campfire. Learn about why The Odyssey has resonated throughout millennia.
There is a hard word to translate in The Odyssey. And it’s in the second line of the epic poem. It is the epithet—the adjective, or byname—for Odysseus. In the proem, or the invocation to the muse, Homer asks the…
FIFA, you insanely corrupt institution. (Source: BBC)
I was 17-18 the first time I read The Book of the New Sun, and I remember it melting my mind. For the first time everything I’d hated about English classes: the interpretation of what authors meant, the use of…
Source: How English costs the English — Janan Ganesh, FT
This made a viral firestorm when it was published by Hesham Eissa and Lindsey Poulter during the pandemic. A beautiful data story about something close to every sugar monsters heart – ice cream. But what you might not know? Hesham…
Once upon a time the tallest skyscraper in the world was the Empire State Building in Midtown Manhattan. Now – as many of you know, it’s the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (featuring in cinematic masterpieces such as Fast & Furious…
We know a certain Prime Minister had a shorter shelf life than a lettuce, but how do other UK Prime Ministers compare by tenure? View in full screen here In fresh vegetables territory, the Viscount Goderich was replaced between four…
Once upon a time, well actually, in 2009. Gordon Brown and Sir Tim Berners-Lee were having dinner. (A reminder: one of them was Prime Minister, and the other is credited with inventing the World Wide Web.) Gordon Brown, doing what…