The following article is the pre-edited version of a chapter in Cultures of London: Legacies of Migration edited by...
Politics
No 2 NATO, No 2 War
On 25th February 2023 I attended a speaker meeting in London criticising what it considered NATO’s and the US’s...
History’s warning against money printing – through stamps
Looking through my father's stamp collection, I found history's warning against money printing - a phenomenon...
A Response to Geoffrey Robertson QC on the Subject of the Magnitsky Act
On 26th October 2020 human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson addressed the Law Society of New College...
Imperialism on Trial: 8th September 2020 ‘The Phone Hacking Scandal and the Case of Assange: a Comparison’
Tuesday 8th September 2020, 7.30-10.00 pm in St Pancras New Church, Euston Road, London, UK...
The Ethics and Politics of ‘Killing Eve’
The following article was written for The Article and published on 21st May 2020; it may be read here....
D. H. Lawrence and: Illness
Report of the Eighth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Catherine Brown Lawrence, Illness, and...
Free the Truth: 11th April 2020
Saturday 11th April 2020, 5.30-8.00 pm by Zoom (during the period of coronavirus lockdown). The event was...
Le procès de lady Chatterley: Orgasme et lutte des classes dans un jardin anglais, ARTE
I was interviewed about Lady Chatterley's Lover for a one-hour ARTE French documentary about the novel's...
Imperialism on Trial: Free Julian Assange February 25th 2020
Tuesday 25th February 2020, 6.30-10.00 pm in St Pancras New Church, Euston Road, London, UK Organiser:...
International Jurists’ Letter in support of Julian Assange, February 2020
INTRODUCTION The following International Jurists’ letter to British authorities in support of Julian...
Free the Truth: Academics, Lawyers and Journalists speak out for Julian Assange, London, 3rd February 2020
Monday 3rd February 2020, 5.30-8.00 pm in St Pancras New Church, Euston Road, London, UK Organisers:...
White Angels: the Perversion of Good Impulses to Negative Ends
Epigraph: 'Since those years it has often been said by pacifists - as in a brave, lop-sided pamphlet which I...
Free The Truth: Academics and Journalists speak out for Julian Assange, London, 28th November 2019
Thursday 28th November, 2019, 5.50-8.30 pm in St Pancras New Church, Euston Road, London, UK ...
Reflections on the People’s Vote March, October 19th, 2019
I marched yesterday for two reasons. First, because I consider a second referendum a democratically-necessary...
Review of ‘Mud and Stars’, a Russian Literary Travel Book by Sara Wheeler
MUD AND STARS: TRAVELS IN RUSSIA WITH PUSHKIN AND OTHER GENIUSES OF THE GOLDEN AGE Sara Wheeler....
‘The Character Assassination of Julian Assange’: Imperialism on Trial – Free Julian Assange, June 2019
Two events entitled 'Imperialism on Trial - Free Julian Assange' were held at the Crypt on the Green and St...
Fragile Peace in Derry, 2019
Yesterday evening a rally in Guildhall Square, Derry, marked the end of a three-day march by more than 160...
DH Lawrence and the Anticipation of a Vegan World
The following paper was given at the 33rd annual international DH Lawrence conference held at the University of...
Imperialism on Trial: Free Julian Assange May 2019
Bloomsbury Baptist Church, London, Wednesday May 1st 2019, 7-10 pm, organised by Greg Sharkey I have...
The Hearing of Julian Assange on the Charge of Skipping Bail, 1st May 2019
Wednesday 1stMay 2019 Southwark Crown Court, London, before Judge Deborah Taylor, c. 10.40-11.40 am. ...
Tribute to Tolstoy
I gave the following speech on the occasion of the 190th anniversary of Lev Tolstoy's birth, 9th September 2018, to a...
Review of ‘Kolyma Stories’, Varlam Shamalov
KOLYMA STORIES Translated and introduced by Donald Rayfield, New York: New York Review of Books, 2018, £14.99, 741 pp....
Review of ‘Teffi: A Life of Letters and of Laughter’
Teffi: A Life of Letters and of Laughter Edythe Haber £20 (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2018 UK, 2019 US), 288...
Russian Actor Vassily Livanov MBE’s Open Letter to the People of Britain
I break my long silence on my blog (students...exam-marking) to reprint the text of the open letter to the British...
World War II and Memory
This article was commissioned by the Institute of Arts and Ideas for their website IAI News. An edited and shortened...
Where Anti-Trumpism is Getting it Wrong; or, My Enemy’s Enemy is Not Above Reproach; or, Ends Do Not Justify Means
It is with some trepidation that I blog for the first time about Donald Trump. It is partly because I...
Anglo-Greek Arcadia and Me
The following article was published in the June 2017 issue of Standpoint magazine, and it may be read here. My...
Is there a distortion in the perception of Russian literature in the English-speaking cultures?
This was written in response to the title question as posed by The Question, an online forum on which experts...
Review of ‘Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel’
This review appeared in Standpoint in December/January 2016/17 John Stubbs, Jonathan Swift: The...
Teffi from Odessa to Paris
The following is a pre-edited version of a review published here in the May 2016 issue of The Literary Review. ...
An Orgy of Revenge in a Man’s World
Review of the Novel Maestra, by L.S. Hilton The review that appears below is a pre-edited version of an...
Whataboutism in the Gulag
A couple of Sundays ago I was in the Gulag. Or, to be accurate, in a memorial on the site of a former...
The Unintended Consequences of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’
This article was published in Standpoint magazine on 24th September 2015. What follows is a pre-edited draft. ...
Review of ‘Behind the Mask: the Life of Vita Sackville-West’ by Matthew Dennison
Matthew Dennison, Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West, William Collins, 2014, 364 pp., £25 This...
Review of ‘Subtly Worded’ by Teffi
Teffi, Subtly Worded, Pushkin Press, 2014, 303 pp., £12 paperback Intro. Anne Marie Jackson. Translations by Anne...
Deconstructing Russophobia
Imagine that Vladimir Putin were not a murderous autocrat and kleptocrat who has spent his fourteen years in power...
Mountains of the Mind: How Russian Writers Saw the Caucasus
This Financial Times article looks at the place of the Caucasus in the Russian cultural imagination over the...
Modernism in our Time
This review was published in Essays in Criticism, 60 (2010), 189-96, and appears here as a pre-edited version. Summary...