Ten books from 2017
A roundup of the ten books I most enjoyed reading in 2017: some sci-fi, some histories of the Russian Revolution, a bit of philosophy and a novel about Ovid…
Automating virtue: China’s Social Credit System and the technology of trust
An article for The Norwich Radical exploring China’s design for enforcing ‘trustworthiness’: the Social Credit System.
Love and loss, then and now: reading Ovid’s poetry of exile
The 2000th anniversary of the Roman poet Ovid’s death, far from home on the shores of the Black Sea, prompted some thoughts on the condition of exile, as experienced then and now.
Communism, Confucius and confusion: China’s turn to the sages
An article for The Norwich Radical discussing Communist China’s complex relationship with the legacy of the old sage Confucius.
The Revolution that might have been
An excerpt from a feature I wrote for issue 70 of The New European about a short-lived experiment with democratic socialism that took place in the Democratic Republic of Georgia in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution.
Promising everything and nothing: Balfour’s fractured letter, 100 years on
A piece for The Norwich Radical exploring the eloquent equivocations and byzantine outworkings of the Balfour Declaration, published 100 years ago this week.
Examining ‘The Corbyn Effect’
A review for Social Europe of the first collection of essays to study the impact of the movement led by Jeremy Corbyn on the Labour Party and wider British and European politics.