What is hope? What would it mean to wish that 2016 will be any better than 2015? As we enter the New Year the latest book by the prolific Terry Eagleton, Hope Without Optimism, offers a brief but wide-ranging meditation on the meaning of a seemingly simple concept that escapes easy definition.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens – today’s Homeric epic
For those of a certain age the success of the latest episode in the Star Wars series seems strangely important. Reflections on the abiding popularity of a cultural icon.
Inventing the Future: a world beyond neoliberalism
Is a future beyond neoliberalism possible? Justin Reynolds begins a new series of reviews of recent books that seek to imagine an alternative (left) economic and political order.
London Overgrown: the ‘rewilding’ of a city
A new collection by electronica pioneer John Foxx imagining the rewilding of London offers a sonic tour through a new green city including ‘The Glades of Soho’ and ‘The Hanging Gardens of Shoreditch’.
Politics, poetry, imagination: a life of Shelley
In an age ever more obsessed with the importance of crafting effective political ‘stories’ and ‘narratives’, Jacqueline Mulhallen’s Percy Bysshe Shelley: Poet and Revolutionary is a timely review of the life and work of a poet writing 200 years ago acutely aware of the vital role the imagination plays in extending the horizons of political possibility.
Submission: a scepticism that questions scepticism
Michel Houellebecq, ever controversial, imagines France shunning centre-left and -right and voting for an Islamic republic to defeat Marine Le Pen’s Front National. A piquant review of an acerbic novel on the limits of liberalism.
Landscapes of Communism: the Soviet Union’s architectural legacy
What might a non-capitalist architecture look like? Owen Hatherley’s Landscapes of Communism takes a tour through the architectural legacy of the Soviet Union.
A Very British Coup, revisited
A Very British Coup, Chris Mullin’s 1982 thriller about a radical Labour leader brought down by a fearful establishment makes for fascinating re-reading in light of Jeremy Corbyn’s unexpected success in this year’s leadership campaign.
‘Tsunami’ – or the inevitable rise and rise of the SNP
A sympathetic but critical review of Tsunami: Scotland’s Democratic Revolution, the third in Iain Macwhirter’s series of books attempting to map Scotland’s fast changing political landscape where the SNP fortress seems unassailable.
Euclid Tsakalotos, Greece, and the dream of a new Europe
Like his colourful predecessor Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s new Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos is an economics professor turned politician with a strong belief in the potential of the European Union as a force for progressive change, as our review of his most recent book shows.