Reviews and News:
The life of Netley Lucas, aristocratic con artist: “With what he called ‘the drawling accent of the spoilt son of an aristocrat’, he exploited the gullibility of a society that trusted upper-class manners and expensive clothing. Later, a friend would recall how convincing Lucas was: ‘He would look you straight in the face and assure you that he was Lord somebody or a hero of the war – and you believed him.’ Lucas monetised his genteel manners and appearance. He sweet-talked hotel managers and shopkeepers, turning charm and the comportment of a gentleman into credit. By 17, he had a chauffeur-driven Daimler from Harrods and was socialising with duchesses and chorus girls.”
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A history of England in Spain: “You learn startling things about the long entanglement of the British with Spain on every page of Simon Courtauld’s absorbing and enjoyable new book, which is not a travelogue but a collection of historical vignettes arranged geographically.”
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Saki’s stories: There is “an unmistakeable hierarchy of beings in his stories. Wolves are at the top, followed by other wild beasts, and beautiful young men; women are at the bottom and domineering aunts are the lowest of all. It’s often noted that whereas aunts in Wodehouse are mocked and avoided, one of Saki’s aunts is eaten by a polecat-ferret”
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The architectural vision of John Soane.
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Escape from East Berlin: “Television viewers expecting the usual programming on NBC on Dec. 10, 1962, were greeted instead with a 90-minute documentary film depicting in startling detail the escape of 29 East Germans who had fled through a tunnel under the Berlin Wall. It was hardly an accident that the network ended up with such great footage. NBC had financed the project, giving the students who led the excavation the equivalent in today’s dollars of about $150,000 in exchange for exclusive rights to film them digging their way from a former swizzle-stick factory in West Berlin into the Communist east. The broadcast was sponsored by Gulf Oil.”
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Painting the American Revolution.
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Essay of the Day:
In The Hedgehog Review, James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky explain where scientific studies of morality can go wrong:
“Modern science has…taught us much about so many things. Fine-grained observation, along with systemization, has permitted confirmation and disconfirmation of theories, revealing the deep levels of physical reality, the chemical building blocks of life, and the wider nature of the universe. This knowledge has brought previously unimaginable utility. Applied to the problems of human existence, science has bestowed immeasurable benefits for health, longevity, comfort, ease of living, and security. A central factor in the achievement of science is the indubitability of its method and findings. Yet how science proceeds on the front of human morality is not entirely clear. All the excitement notwithstanding, there is a fundamental dilemma facing any moral science. If a genuine science of morality is to be established—one capable of adjudicating moral differences—it must meet at least two challenges: the challenge of definition and the challenge of demonstration. As we will explain, the dilemma emerges because a science of morality can meet at most only one of these two challenges; grasping one horn requires releasing the other.”
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Image of the Day: Adda River Natural Park
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Poem: Martial, X.9, translated freely by Tyler Goldman
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