The Forsyte Saga was the great novel of the City of London when published in the early twentieth centuy and yet it is in danger of being forgotten. It deserves revisiting.
Amidst growing unease with Austrian-Hungarian political dominance in the nineteenth century, Ljudevit Gaj, a visionary 26-year old Croatian linguist and writer, laid the foundations for a vision of a single, united, Slavic group.
For the west, Greece is classical Greece, the birthplace of western culture, thought, and democracy, while for the Slavic-speaking world it is a brother-nation of the Orthodox church, a common inheritance stretching across eastern Europe.
The sacred springs of mythology are considered the source of inspiration for the finest poets – both ancient and modern. But like poetry itself, they remain elusive.
The 1945 novel presents the ancient bridge as a metaphor for Bosnia’s suffering, its fragility and the country’s role as a link between the East and the West.
In Ancient Athens, ostracism, a mechanism for exiling citizens written into its laws, was thought to play a pivotal role in preserving the health of the city-state. But how did it play out in practice?
The little-known empire of Trebizond was finally swept away by the rise of the Ottomans in the fifteenth century. But up in the monasteries of the Matzouka the dream of Byzantium remains.
The Black Sea is back at the centre of a new order of world geopolitics.
Philip Thicknesse, 18th century writer, libertine, and scandal maker, found joy in his countryside retreat – a grotto inspired by the romantic fashion for ‘ornamental hermits’.
Space entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk are recapturing the bold and individualistic spirit of America’s first astronauts, the Mercury Seven.
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