Sebastian Cody explores the challenges of ballet historiography, emphasising the need for rigorous scholarship amidst widespread inaccuracies
In 1963, Jean-Luc Nancy tackled the subject of generational silence in his article ‘A Certain Silence’ (republished in OLR in 2005). Nancy, a well-known French philosophy and writer, wrote ‘A Certain Silence’ only a year after he graduated in Philosophy…
Looking Back at the Russian Revolution 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, which occurred in March and November (Gregorian calendar) in 1917. The pair of revolutions saw the disassembly of the Tsarist autocracy in favour of the…
What’s the artist for in modern Scotland? Curating our accumulated history? Envisioning our possible and impossible futures? Diagnosing the ills of our present and prescribing treatment for the body politic? Showing us who we are, or who we ought to…
My new book, Viking Law and Order, paints a rather different picture of Viking Age society from the one we are used to. We often hear discussions of violent raids and systematic pillaging by warriors arriving in long ships. It…
It would seem that elements of the Anglosphere have always required a bogey or a multiplicity of bogeys. Perhaps other spheres do too. It is certainly the case that the notion of coping with the feared evil ‘Other’ has also…
Britain has long had a contradictory relationship to movie stardom, as two articles from the fan magazine Picturegoer, both by the same writer, both from 1943, eloquently demonstrate. In October, Lionel Collier had asked hopefully ‘are we making our own…
An extract from The Edinburgh Festivals: Culture and Society in Post-war Britain by Angela Bartie On Sunday 24 August 1947, the first Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama opened with a service of praise in St Giles’ Cathedral, the…
What do you imagine when you think about great Catholic art? Perhaps you call to mind the gilded pages of illuminated medieval manuscripts and the glories of Renaissance painting and sculpture. Maybe you recall more recent cinematic masterpieces, such as…
Migration today is an increasingly contentious, even toxic, issue. It is being held responsible for Brexit, the coming to power of United States President Donald Trump and a rise in hate crimes. In such a climate we tend to forget…