BIZARRE: 12 - You Need To See This

Two sides to a story: why feminist retellings are filling our bookshelves

From Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Julia to Shakespeare’s Rosaline, the trend for a new perspective on a familiar tale is continuing apace. Authors and publishers explain what old stories tell us about today

The Guardian - UK · Mar 24, 2023

Christopher Hitchens was a model of the public intellectual as celebrity. Could he really be the saviour of the Left?

Future generations are very unlikely to credit Christopher Hitchens with saving the Left. Nor is he likely to be remembered as a great essayist like his long-time hero George Orwell, or even H.L. Mencken, after whom he named his 20-year column for The Nation magazine.

The Conversation · Mar 14, 2023

Margaret Atwood's 'Old Babes in the Wood' tackles what it means to be human

Margaret Atwood's first collection of short stories in almost a decade is a dazzling mixture of tales showcasing her imagination and humor — and exploring everything from love to the afterlife.

WEKU · Mar 14, 2023

Carol Vorderman weighs in on Gary Lineker row as she makes 'ironic' discovery at BBC HQ

The telly brainbox urged her Twitter followers to watch a video she recorded at the broadcaster's London offices

Daily Mirror · Mar 11, 2023

The Humanities are not dead

According to no less an authority than The New Yorker, that most bookish of large-circulation magazines, the academic study of imaginative literature is in the process of vanishing from American college campuses.

Chicago Sun-Times · Mar 9, 2023

‘Tucker Carlson took a page from 1984’: Whoopi Goldberg roasts Fox News host over Jan 6 footage scandal

Carlson has faced condemnation for the misleading segment

The Independent UK · Mar 7, 2023

David Bowie: five must-have items for the V&A's new centre

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has announced the opening of a new David Bowie Centre for the Performing Arts in 2025 at V&A East Storehouse in east London. This follows the news that the museum has acquired – through donation – the artist’s fabled archive.

The Conversation · Mar 3, 2023

Feminism taught me all I need to know about men like Trump and Putin

Like all abusive men, dictators seek to control who can speak and which narratives are believed. The only difference is scale, says the US writer Rebecca Solnit

The Guardian - UK · Feb 25, 2023

The Ferguson Report: Irony declared dead as publisher announces ‘sensitivity rewrite’ of 1984

The classic political novel 1984 will be rewritten by Inclusion And Diversity specialists who think they know better than George Orwell.

The New Daily · Feb 24, 2023

Commentary: The war on 'woke' is meaningless, which is why it’s so popular

Right-wing politicians are on the warpath. They want to banish everything that is, as they call it, “woke.”

Tribune News Service · Feb 22, 2023