“Real life and the people closest to him remain a mystery.” This reminds me of someone 🤔

In a post-literate world, reading is treated more like an assumed good than a skill to be actively practised. My latest for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social: engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

In a post-literate world, reading is treated more like an assumed good than a skill to be actively practised. The perils of hyper-literacy | @alastairbenn.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

For @engelsbergideas.bsky.social, I pay tribute to a Scotland of the past, whose traces can still be heard.

The habits of speech and mind that shaped the history of Scotland’s north country still echo in the present. Scotland’s north country | @alastairbenn.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/sco...

Learned and far‑sighted: Daniel Peris on Russia’s hegemonic destiny for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social:

American interest in Greenland puts Denmark in a familiar bind. Joshua Treviño for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social makes the case for strategic imagination.

Lovely bit of micro-history: a 1926 BBC broadcast panicked Britain. Daniel Marc Janes for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social:

A fascinating snapshot from Felice Basbøll for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social on the complex bonds between Greenland and Denmark. engelsbergideas.com/portraits/kn...

For your holiday weekend reading & reflection, here’s my 259th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing, podcasts, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, share as widely as possible, & solidarity, all! 🗃️ blackwhiteandread.com/scholarsunda...

@alastairbenn.bsky.social is joined by Prof Leo Damrosch – author of Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson – to explore RLS’s life & legacy, including one of his most enduring literary creations: Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde via @engelsbergideas.bsky.social #C19 💙📚 www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnJ2...

Nice to be asked to pick my books of the year by @alastairbenn.bsky.social for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/reviews/book...

In such an age as this, history is our wisest guide, and to neglect her is to take the short path to defeat. My latest for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social: engelsbergideas.com/notebook/bri...

Britain’s elite needs a history lesson | @alastairbenn.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/bri...

My entry:

The industrialist Henry J. Kaiser played a pivotal role in the lightning mobilisation of American industry that took place after Pearl Harbor, a contribution that deserves wider recognition. Who remembers Henry J. Kaiser? | Gordon F. Sander engelsbergideas.com/portraits/wh...

A paean to the Paris Métro | @agnescpoirier.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/a-p...

I very much enjoyed interviewing the excellent Karolina Watroba about Kafka's The Trial on the latest EI Podcast: audioboom.com/posts/874688...

Wrote a little something for Mann’s 150th birthday, which is today. Alles Gute, Tommy!

One of the greatest European writers, Thomas Mann, born 150 years ago, dedicated his life to the pursuit of literary form. He left a monumental legacy. Thomas Mann’s cathedrals in prose | @mortenhoijensen.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/tho...

For the evening crowd.

The times and tides of the wild River Thames | @mathewlyons.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/reviews/the-...

💯 Essay by @alastairbenn.bsky.social for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social "Siena's art...is still capable, so many centuries on, of kindling a bright flame of inspiration, power, and self-knowledge in any mind receptive to its message." 🗃️ #arthistory #medievalsky engelsbergideas.com/reviews/the-...

I explore the art of Siena in my latest essay for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social:

The National Gallery's Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 ‒1350 captures key developments, in elegantly curated snapshots, of the early textures of Western Europe’s artistic vitality. The art of Siena: a question of perspective | @alastairbenn.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/reviews/the-...

Caught between scepticism and spiritual hunger, the ‘crypto-religious’ are seeking something to believe in outside the parameters of organised religion. The Church of the Almost Believers | Guy Stagg engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-c...

"Until a resolution is found, Kashmir will continue to inspire and foster terrorist acts and remain one of the core grievances in the Islamist narrative." @suzanneraine.bsky.social on how Kashmir’s forgotten war has gone global engelsbergideas.com/essays/kashm...

The art of the hedgerow | @troopersnooks.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

I thought it was time for an upbeat piece for once - so I wrote a little love letter to America's independent bookstores for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social - with thanks to @alastairbenn.bsky.social for commissioning it, as always: engelsbergideas.com/notebook/ame...

Mental health’s expanding empire | @tiffanyjenkins.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/reviews/ment...

How the Young Turks became tyrants | @jackfdickens.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/how...

I really enjoyed the opportunity to review Paul & John: A Love Story in Songs for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/reviews/the-...

Really enjoyed doing this for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social. Many thanks to @alastairbenn.bsky.social and @paullay.bsky.social for the invite! podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e...

In an age of rising inequality and economic disaffection, Fitzgerald's slender satire of American East Coast society, with its evocation of the conflict between the old world and new money, still resonates. Gatsby, still great at 100 | Guy Stagg engelsbergideas.com/notebook/gat...

A relic of the salons of 17th-century France, Mademoiselle de Scudéry's Carte de Tendre tells a universal story about the tensions between desire and civilised behaviour. Reading the map of love | @murielzagha.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/rea...

Henry Fuseli knew about nightmares | Alexander Lee engelsbergideas.com/reviews/henr...

English comedy is alchemical, a tradition that can absorb and ameliorate contemporary debates over social class and national identity. It even promises the renewal of mystery amid the humdrum of the everyday. My latest essay for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social: engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-s...

Interest rates, mankind’s greatest invention | Edward Chancellor engelsbergideas.com/essays/inter...

Lovely essay engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-s...

"We have been lucky in them, I reflected as we crossed the border back into Poland, but they have been unlucky in us", writes Professor Brendan Simms for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/my-...

Thanks Tony!

A delightful piece (as usual) by @alastairbenn.bsky.social. As someone who grew up in Sweden in the 1980s, where English comedy shows were very popular, I remember that we always used to say (not without pride) that we had a unique understanding and appreciation for the English sense of humour.

English comedy is alchemical, a tradition that can absorb and ameliorate contemporary debates over social class and national identity. The subtle art of English comedy | Alastair Benn engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-s...

This by @alastairbenn.bsky.social is a lovely hymn to how we joke. It's oddly plangent too. I remember watching Mitchell & Webb in Edinburgh, and DM reading Betjeman's A Subaltern's Love Song at a friend's wedding. And temping in a boring office trying to write a sitcom about it, then hearing...

Do read this! From Robert Louis Stevenson to Numberwang, via Croydon, Slough and Hackney, to the emergence of a new, and gentle, seam of English pastoral comedy (Mackenzie Crook’s The Detectorists and Will Sharpe’s Flowers) that helps glimpse life’s mysteriousness:

The subtle art of English comedy | @alastairbenn.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-s...

The quest for the age of the earth | Lizzie Hibbert engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-q...

Europe’s reckoning with history | Vladislav Zubok engelsbergideas.com/notebook/eur...

Goya in conversation with Cézanne | @mathewlyons.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/reviews/goya...