An excerpt from a feature I wrote for issue 63 of The New European looking at Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus and the entanglement of the German classical tradition in the rise of fascism.
As successive hurricanes rampage across the warming Atlantic seas, North Korea threatens further nuclear adventures, and the Trump administration ponders the vexed question of the wisdom of honouring the Paris Climate Accord, we can at least find consolation in our impeccable stewardship of the moons of Saturn.
An excerpt from a feature for the September 2017 edition of boom saloon magazine. The great Victorian social critic William Morris feared the industrial age heralded the end of skilled workmanship. But do emerging 3D printing technologies open possibilities for a new era of craft, realised through techniques Morris could never have imagined?
For some the possibility of space exploration offers an escape from our sublunary cares. But as Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Aurora warns, space may simply be too big to make a home beyond this world.
Ideology, with good reason, is a word freighted with dark associations. But it remains an essential concept for understanding how political and economic transformation happens.
Jeremy Corbyn’s serene countenance during the election campaign drew frequent parallels with that of a Buddhist monk, Corbyn himself at one point referring to his efforts to attune himself to a Zen mindframe. But when watching Corbyn deliver his speech at Glastonbury last week, it occurred to me that a comparison with another spiritual archetype might be more appropriate.
A feature for issue 51 of The New European investigating the music of the Soviet avant-garde during the years immediately following the October Revolution.