The TLS
@TheTLS
Followers
77K
Following
971
Media
2K
Statuses
48K
Book reviews, essays and poetry from leading writers since 1902. Subscribe today: https://t.co/LK4AOeBjBv
London, UK
Joined December 2007
E. K. Myerson: How the asbestos industry contaminated everything
the-tls.com
Once marketed as the “magic mineral”, asbestos has become synonymous with disease. Bad Dust moves from mines in South Africa to factories in northern
0
0
1
'At once a philosophical inquiry, a historical portrait of mid-century Albania and a novel of young love and political disillusionment.' Linda Kinstler on a family history scarred by communist rule
the-tls.com
It is a common enough experience: an unfamiliar family photograph turns up unannounced, pulled from a forgotten folder or, more likely these days, discovered in a cobwebbed corner of the internet. It...
0
0
0
'What we need to understand is why common knowledge of something morally execrable isn’t enough to result in co-ordinated social action.' Jessie Munton (@alabalawhiskey): Can communal beliefs be reconciled with empirical facts?
the-tls.com
When Monica and Chandler get together in Friends, they think they’re keeping it a secret. Joey finds out, and is sworn to secrecy. Rachel finds out, but has made a new year’s resolution not to...
0
0
0
'The idea of the West began not in English-speaking countries, but in France.' Hans Kundnani (@hanskundnani): A civilization defined by Russophobia
the-tls.com
It is extraordinary how the idea of the West is thrown around as if its meaning were obvious and stable, when it is nothing of the kind. The term can refer to anything from a geographic space to a...
0
1
1
'While the US still has the larger economy and a more youthful population, it now faces a peer competitor with four times as many citizens.' Katie Stallard (@katiestallard): The troubled history of US-China relations https://t.co/IzxZcEa5GQ
the-tls.com
Xi Zhongxun landed in New York on a grey day in October 1980 as part of the first delegation of Chinese governors ever to visit the US, and on a charm offensive. It had been little more than a year...
0
1
0
'A founding document designed to be amended has turned into the very thing that its framers presumably hoped to avoid.' Lawrence Douglas on the US Constitution as a straitjacket
the-tls.com
Thirty years ago, Donald Lutz, a political scientist at the University of Houston, made a broad comparative study of the amendment process of national constitutions. His conclusion was that the US...
0
1
3
'She seemed ever at the mercy of events, struggling to survive in a world where the dizzying revolutions of Fortune’s wheel could turn triumph to disaster at almost a moment’s notice.' Chris Given-Wilson: Coming out on top in the War of the Roses
the-tls.com
Though 1485 is no longer regarded as the caesura between England’s medieval and modern history, it was undoubtedly the caesura in the life of Margaret
0
0
1
The new issue of the TLS, featuring Angela Leighton on Tennyson; @katiestallard on US-China relations; @JoyceCarolOates on Daphne du Maurier; @George_Berridge on Frankenstein; @miles_leeson on Iris Murdoch’s poetry; A. K. Blakemore on horror stories – and much more
1
7
14
'The author’s worry that he is still “apologetically queer” shapes his voice.' Georgie Carr: Gay cinema and the critic https://t.co/8TkHBsKhPv
the-tls.com
It’s 1995; open the Independent and turn to the cinema listings page. In the right-hand corner between the showtimes for Brighton and Bristol is a
0
0
0
Behind the scenes at the theatre (and the bookshop). And why theatrical spectacle is so intriguing, from antquity to now. @TheTLS
the-tls.com
I have learned a lot from doing my UK tour and taking the Romans (“Secret Histories of Rome”) to theatres around the country. For a start, it is very
0
2
44
'His film studio, El Deseo, has given him a freedom not even Martin Scorsese enjoys.' Muriel Zagha on a Spanish auteur in the making
the-tls.com
There was something improbable and even miraculous about Pedro Almodóvar’s becoming a filmmaker. His parents had hoped that he would become a priest.
0
0
0
'Each course also featured a “sotelte”, or subtlety, an ornamental dish meant to impress, often sculpted in sugar.' Irina Dumitrescu on medieval attitudes to social class
the-tls.com
I recently reread Paul Fussell’s Class: A guide through the American status system (1983), a merciless book that I suspect would be unpublishable today.
1
0
3
'She makes the bold decision to emphasize the literature and let the history take a back seat.' Andrew Hadfield on literature written in England after 1603 https://t.co/4kvJvIdGmG
the-tls.com
Literary histories can either be works that set the agenda for decades to come, or useful overviews, treated respectfully, but regarded as handy guides
0
2
2
'It was a reminder not only of how important spectacle often is in any sort of performance, but also of how intriguing for the audience is the way in which that spectacle works.' Mary Beard (@wmarybeard) on stage Machinery: ancient and modern https://t.co/NRyphFItah
the-tls.com
I have learned a lot from doing my UK tour and taking the Romans (“Secret Histories of Rome”) to theatres around the country. For a start, it is very
0
5
16
'The argument is not that he wrote philosophical treatises, but rather that his fictions are imaginative “thought experiments”.' Ad Putter: Love trumps conventional ethics in Chaucer’s work
the-tls.com
At the end of Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer submits his poem to “moral Gower” and “philosophical Strode” for corrections. In this thoughtful and eloquent
0
1
1
'Zuroski finds resistance to violence and a kind of therapeutic gothic in the excesses of Walpole’s Castle.' Min Wild: Bizarre moments, gothic excess and weirdness in three fantastical novels
the-tls.com
The eighteenth century is “weirder than we realise”, according to A Funny Thing; many of us who study that underestimated period will be thumping our
0
1
4
'At this moment of transformation, however, the literary world seemed to be at a loss as to how to write about these changes.' Nooresahar Ahmad on eighteenth-century writers’ contempt for trade https://t.co/upicaVpQlQ
the-tls.com
In 1719, the British public was introduced to Robinson Crusoe, a castaway who described the materials and mechanisms of his survival in meticulous detail:
0
0
2
'Why have readers felt the need to absolve a man who died 600 years ago in absolute comfort and luxury of so shocking a crime?' Eleanor Janega: How the charge of rape against Chaucer has been explained https://t.co/IZWn8ghQCe
the-tls.com
The title and subtitle of Father Chaucer and the Apologists refer to what medievalists have long termed the “Chaumpaigne release”: a quitclaim stating
2
0
2
'The prose flows in sync with the protagonist’s thoughts: now rolling along, now jolting on the tracks, now braking hard.' Anna Aslanyan: A ‘so-called writer’ takes a railway journey into his past
the-tls.com
The European train novel is almost as old as the railway itself. Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son (1848), Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1878), Graham
0
0
0
'Cortical blindness is a metonymy for what even healthy brains are wired to do: rationalize themselves and their perceptions through stories.' Michele Pridmore-Brown on brain injuries and personality disorders https://t.co/RvwjO6dNSL
the-tls.com
The drive toward narrative, writes Pria Anand in The Mind Electric: Stories of the strangeness and wonder of our brains, is as unconscious in humans as
1
1
2