by David Alston Can you tell us a bit about the book? Slaves and Highlanders is an exploration of the role played by people from the North of Scotland in the slave trade and in the plantations of the Caribbean.…
In this interview, author and archaeologist Warwick Ball discusses his travels and research that led to his new book, The Eurasian Steppe. Can you tell us a bit about The Eurasian Steppe? The book started life many years ago as…
By Dr Paul Malgrati Over the past 220 years, the Burns Supper has become the quintessential festival of Scottish culture, identity, and gastronomy. Who would have thought, back in 1801 as nine admirers of Robert Burns held a private memorial…
By Peggy Kamuf In tribute to Jean-Luc Nancy, whose death was announced in August, Peggy Kamuf looks back on a landmark special issue of Paragraph (‘On the Work of Jean-Luc Nancy’, Paragraph, Vol. 16, Issue 2) which she edited in…
by Shivan Mahendrarajah The Taliban are back in power, ushering in renewed fears of destruction of cultural heritages. Their first time in office (1996–2001), the Taliban destroyed edifices on the basis that they were ‘un-Islamic’ and/or ‘beacons’ for polytheists (mushrikin).…
In this exclusive extract from chapter 6 of The Eurasian Steppe, author and archaeologist Warwick Ball explores the material culture of the nomadic Scythians, a cultural group that flourished in the Eurasian Steppe in the first millennium BC. What has…
By Marta Kargól Some years ago, I discovered an extraordinary collection of embroidery samples preserved in The Museum Rotterdam. The collection consists of more than 250 embroidery samples, patterns and fashion drawings. These objects bear witness to the great yet…
By Christopher Stokes Skylarks, clouds, roses, rivers. What one of my undergraduate students once memorably termed the ‘flowers and s**t’ sense of Romanticism. It’s true that Romantic poetry has a narrow circuit of classic reference points, but one way to…
By Neil Archer What makes a performance ‘truthful’? In one of my previous professional lives, as an actor, this question was one that concerned me on an everyday and practical level. But it’s one I’m still dealing with in my…