Have you ever done an internet search for ‘terrorist attacks since 9/11? I suspect not. But if you did, as I have to write this piece, you’d be astounded at the number. Dependent upon how you look at them, there have been 25-30 major terrorist attacks in the last 15 years, attributable to Islamic extremism. […]
From the outset, Sebastian Faulks’s ‘Birdsong’ is a novel of parallels. Parallels between joyous youth and broken youth, love and hatred, peacetime and wartime, past and present. We are introduced to Stephen Wraysford and follow his journey through War and Peace. Faulks’s intense imagery and narration provides the reader with a graphic insight into […]
‘The Monster of the Andes’, ‘The Butcher of Rostov’, ‘The Wolf of Moscow’, The ‘Rippers’, Jack, Camden and Yorkshire. Serial killers, the very embodiment of brutality, bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses of the baying public like no other criminal type. Throughout history, serial killers have been sensationalised, their crimes detailed in explicit detail […]
The 1960s were a period of cultural radicalism. During the civil rights era, counterculture became prevalent. From the hippie movement to London’s Notting Hill Carnival, cultural expression emerged not simply as a means of voicing oneself but also as a form of protest. Civil rights and music culture in America were notably intertwined and expressed […]
The region occupied by the people of Israel and Palestine has seen more than a thousand years of bloodshed. Modern conflict follows a long line of violent history. Historically the state now known as Israel was located along the lucrative Silk Road from China, what Samuel P. Huntington would describe as the ‘cultural edge’ or […]
Just five days after his second inauguration as President of the US, Donald Trump signed an order to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. The decision formed part of his new executive order, entitled ‘Putting America First in international climate agreements’. It outlined changes to reverse pre-existing US climate regulations, boosting oil and gas production, […]
Recently, the ‘I, too, am’ photo campaign against racial prejudice on university campuses has swept the country. Originating at Harvard University, it sparked further campaigns in Oxford and Cambridge where students of ethnic minorities write down everyday racist comments they have experienced at university. These comments may be perceived as innocent and harmless, but in […]
During the early to mid-20th century, five million African-Americans made the passage from the former slave-holding south to the industrialised cities of the north and west United States. Cruel Jim Crow laws and tough financial situations forced families to move hundreds of miles to states such as New York, Illinois and Michigan, where demand for […]
Whilst this article provides a simple, brief overview of the forced adoption of the Queue, this was but one of the forms of oppression experienced at the hands of the Qing dynasty, with there being considerably more complexities and laws than can be written about. Great strides have been made towards stronger representations of queerness […]
Trigger warning: Sexual Assault. Between the two creation stories told in Genesis 1 and 2, there are contradicting events concerning how the first man and woman came to be. One common theme that is evidently clear between the two is that the portrayal of women can be perceived as fundamentally inferior. From the get-go, in […]
Amidst the clouds of legal racial segregation and inhumane apartheid laws in 20th century South Africa, music was a silver lining for the masses. Songs werepowerful political tools that subliminally shaped the opinions of the people and encouraged protest against the regime. Freedom songs sang praises of the anti-apartheid heroes and lifted the spirits of […]
These will be the words proclaimed to Baby George in three generations time. The birth of the Queen’s third great grandchild is the most significant royal birth in decades. An estimated £250 million has been generated so far from the purchase of memorabilia related to his birth. Royal babies have always been greatly celebrated in […]
Cartography in the iconography of British imperialism portrayed the visual culture of the British Empire. The Empire came to cover huge swathes of territory and from the nineteenth century onwards, Commonwealth countries were coloured pink on maps. Pink was a printer’s compromise for letters overprinted to be clearly read, as the colour that was traditionally […]
In October 2023, when the cast of the iconic play Les Misérables performed at the Sondheim Theatre in London, they launched into their famous protest song, ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ as a part of their act. But what happened after that was entirely unscripted. The stage was abruptly taken over by activists from […]