Culture, History, Homes, Magazines, Reviews, Travel

COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE – January 29, 2025 Issue

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COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE (January 28, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ – The wonderful thing about Springers…

Full of the joys of spring(ers)

The non-stop English springer is still our number one working spaniel, reveals Matthew Dennison, as he delves into this enthusiastic, energetic breed

Snake, rattle and roll

Rob Crossan investigates the deeply spiritual origins of that enduring family board-game favourite Snakes and Ladders

Heard it on the radio

The wireless broke new ground as the first form of home-based mass entertainment and is still going strong in the age of the smart speaker, finds Ben Lerwill

Friends with benefits

Nematodes are a natural way to halt the march of all manner of garden pests and Charles Quest-Ritson is a convert

Mould and behold

Josiah Wedgwood was a brilliant businessman with a remarkable social conscience. Tristram Hunt assesses his life and legacy

Catch us if you can

Owain Jones sizes up six of the best as he picks out the players to watch in this year’s Guinness Six Nations rugby extravaganza

Roger Morgan-Grenville’s favourite painting

The conservation campaigner selects a work that inspired his lifelong obsession with seabirds

A Palladian premonition

Richard Hewlings offers a fresh analysis of the architecture at Bramham Park, a highly original West Yorkshire country house

The legacy

Kate Green remembers Robert FitzRoy, the founder of the Met Office whose name lives on in the BBC’s Shipping Forecast

Dear country diary

Paul Fleckney flicks through The Guardian’s Country Diary, which has offered a snapshot of rural life for more than 120 years

Interiors

The best stoves and fireplaces picked by Amelia Thorpe, plus the alternatives to burning logs

Luxury

Hetty Lintell’s top timepieces and James Haskell’s favourite things

Magnificent mahonias

Charles Quest-Ritson makes the case for mahonias, arguing that their pleasantly scented flowers are a seasonal delight

Kitchen garden cook

Melanie Johnson pairs peppery horseradish with salmon fillets

Ring-dove beauteous!

John Lewis-Stempel coos over the much-maligned wood pigeon, that canny, keen-eyed and fast-flying stalwart of our countryside

Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Reviews

Exhibitions: ‘Franz Kafka’ At The Morgan Library

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MORGAN LIBRARY (January 28, 2025): Our curator Sal Robinson discusses the importance of the Bible in the history of literature in “Franz Kafka.” Few could have predicted the influence Kafka’s relatively small body of work would have on every realm of thought and creative endeavor over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st.

This exhibition will present, for the first time in the United States, the Bodleian Library’s extraordinary holdings of literary manuscripts, correspondence, diaries, and photographs related to Kafka, including the original manuscript of his novella The Metamorphosis.

Other highlights include the manuscripts of his novels Amerika and The Castle; letters and postcards addressed to his favorite sister, Ottla; his personal diaries, in which he also composed fiction, including his literary breakthrough, the 1912 story “The Judgment”; and unique items such as his drawings, the notebooks he used when studying Hebrew, and family photographs. In addition to presenting unique literary and biographical material, the exhibition examines Kafka’s afterlife, from the complex journeys of his manuscripts, to the posthumous creation of a literary icon whose very name has become an adjective, to his immense influence on the worlds of literature, theater, dance, film, and the visual arts.

Drawing on institutional holdings and private collections in the United States and Europe, the Morgan will show a selection of key works, among them Andy Warhol’s portrait of Kafka, part of his 1980 series Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century.

“Franz Kafka” is open to the public November 22, 2024 through April 13, 2025.

News, Newspapers, Opinion, Podcasts, Politics

News: 80th Anniversary Of Auschwitz Liberation, Gaza Ceasefire Next Steps

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MONOCLE RADIO (January 28, 2025): As the world marks 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, Sudha David-Wilp and Stuart Dowell join Emma Nelson to discuss the Polish and German perspectives. Plus, Israel moves to shut down Unrwa, Ukraine’s drone-only military ops and highlights from the Jeddah Islamic Art Biennale.

News, Newspapers, Opinion, Politics

The New York Times – Tuesday, January 28, 2025

January 28, 2025 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

In Exacting Retribution, Trump Aims at the Future as Well as the Past

The president made good on promises to seek revenge against enemies during his first week back in power, signaling in the process that anyone who crosses him in the future could also suffer.

Behind the Colombia Blowup: Mapping Trump’s Rapid-Escalation Tactics

There were no Situation Room meetings and no quiet calls to de-escalate a dispute with an ally. Just threats, counterthreats, surrender and an indication of the president’s approach to Greenland and Panama.

At Auschwitz, a Solemn Ceremony at a Time of Rising Nationalism

World leaders and a dwindling group of survivors joined in a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp by the Red Army.

As Trump and Putin Circle Each Other, an Agenda Beyond Ukraine Emerges

President Trump jabs at the Russian leader with threats; Vladimir Putin responds with flattery. But there are notable signals in their jousting, including a revived discussion about nuclear arms control.