Category Archives: Culture

Previews: Country Life Magazine – Nov 29, 2023

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Country Life Magazine – November 29, 2023: The latest issue features seasonal wine, medieval homes and our annual Christmas gift guide…

Claus for celebration

Embrace the festive spirit, with bells on, in Amie Elizabeth White’s magical A to Z of Christmas

Well, isn’t that just the icing on the biscuit?

There’s always a reason to biscuit, discovers Katy Birchall

A modern guide to table manners

Catch up on the etiquette of for-mal dining with Annunciata Elwes

Sip, sip, hooray!

Accessories to aid your festive entertaining, with Amelia Thorpe

I’ll have a side of drama, please

Flambé is back on the menu as Tom Parker Bowles argues for the return of tableside cooking

What to serve when

Nicola Arcedeckne-Butler has a tipple idea for every occasion

I go to pieces

A puzzled Ben Lerwill explores the enduring appeal of the jigsaw

He who pays the piper

Octavia Pollock finds a pig in a poke has gone for a burton

Christmas gifts

Hetty Lintell’s perfect present picks for everyone in your life

Editors’ choice

Country Life’s section editors reveal their festive fancies

John Lewis-Stempel’s favourite painting

The Nature writer selects a work in praise of the Southdown sheep

Glory of the garden

Tiffany Daneff marvels at floral creations from Rachel Siegfried

Hitting the sweet spot

How did marzipan take Britain by storm, asks Matthew Dennison

Raise your glass

Mary Miers on fears for the craft of stained-glass window making

Mastered in every detail

Jeremy Musson explores the houses of Henry James novels

Native breeds

Kate Green on Aylesbury ducks

Previews: The Progressive Magazine – December 2023

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theprogressive Magazine December 2023/January 2024:

Tunnels for Safety and Tunnels for Death

LF_3BombShelterShrine12092001  Lloyd Francis  Ameriya shelter shrine.jpg 2.jpg

An underground nuclear arsenal in Israel dwarfs the tunnels alleged at a Gaza hospital.

It’s one thing to burrow beneath the ground, digging to construct a tunnel for refuge, a passage of goods, or to store weapons during a time of war. It’s quite another for a small child to use one hand to dig their way out of the rubble that has collapsed on them. 

Vox Populist: Planet Wins; News Wins

Words from populist author, public speaker, and radio commentator Jim Hightower. 

Which Path Will You Choose?

Editor’s Note for the October/November 2023 issue. 

Gen Z Is Taking the Reins

A variety of young candidates are signing up to run for elected office at local, state, and national levels.

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Dec 4, 2023

Dancers and musicians can be seen practicing in the Juilliard School at night.

The New Yorker – December 4, 2023 issue: The new issue‘s cover features Sergio García Sánchez’s “Ready to Soar” – The artist discusses rhythm, rigor, and the linguistic capabilities of art.

How Jensen Huang’s Nvidia Is Powering the A.I. Revolution

A portrait of Jensen Huang made of computer chips.

The company’s C.E.O. bet it all on a new kind of chip. Now that Nvidia is one of the biggest companies in the world, what will he do next?

By Stephen Witt

The revelation that ChatGPT, the astonishing artificial-intelligence chatbot, had been trained on an Nvidia supercomputer spurred one of the largest single-day gains in stock-market history. When the Nasdaq opened on May 25, 2023, Nvidia’s value increased by about two hundred billion dollars. A few months earlier, Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s C.E.O., had informed investors that Nvidia had sold similar supercomputers to fifty of America’s hundred largest companies. By the close of trading, Nvidia was the sixth most valuable corporation on earth, worth more than Walmart and ExxonMobil combined. Huang’s business position can be compared to that of Samuel Brannan, the celebrated vender of prospecting supplies in San Francisco in the late eighteen-forties. “There’s a war going on out there in A.I., and Nvidia is the only arms dealer,” one Wall Street analyst said.

Why Trump’s Trials Should Be on TV

Why Trumps Trials Should Be on TV

The conduct of the trials, their fairness, and their possibly damning verdicts will be at the center of the 2024 election. Transparency is crucial.

By Amy Davidson Sorkin

On November 6th, Donald Trump emerged from a New York City courtroom, where he had testified in a civil trial alleging that he and others in the Trump Organization had committed fraud, and gave himself a great review. “I think it went very well,” he told reporters. “If you were there, and you listened, you’d see what a scam this is.” He meant that the case was a scam and not that his company was. “Everybody saw what happened today,” he went on. “And it was very conclusive.”

How to Play a Nazi

Sandra Hüller photographed sitting in a chair by Mark Peckmezian.

The German actress Sandra Hüller probes characters with unusual depth. But to portray a Fascist wife, in “The Zone of Interest,” she reversed her usual approach—and withheld her empathy.

By Rebecca Mead

In “Anatomy of a Fall,” Hüller stars as a successful novelist accused of murdering her husband. The camera often lingers on her face as it shifts like quicksilver between playfulness, defiance, and evasion.Photograph by Mark Peckmezian for The New Yorker

The New York Times Magazine – Nov 26, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (November 17, 2023): The latest issue features Was Peace Ever Possible in the Israel-Palestine Conflict?; Finding a Moral Center in This Era of War; The Beatles Are Still Charting the Future of Pop. It Looks Bleak – Their latest song points toward a future where no golden goose need ever stop laying, and more…

Was Peace Ever Possible?

Thirty years ago, a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seemed achievable. The story of how it fell apart reveals why the fight remains so intractable today.

MODERATED BY EMILY BAZELON

Finding a Moral Center in This Era of War

By David Marchese Photograph by Mamadi Doumbouya

Phil Klay, as both a participant and a writer, has been thinking deeply about war for a long time. In his two acclaimed works of fiction, the book of short stories “Redeployment,” which won a 2014 National Book Award, and the novel “Missionaries” (2020), and in the nonfiction collection “Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War” (2022), Klay has interrogated, to profound effect and with a deeply humane and moral sensibility, what war does to our hearts and minds, individually and collectively, here and abroad. “I’m interested in the kinds of stories that we tell ourselves about war,” says Klay, who is a 40-year-old veteran of the Iraq war. 

Everybody Knows Flo From Progressive. Who Is Stephanie Courtney?

Stephanie Courtney gets makeup for her character Flo.

A polo shirt, a white apron and a retro hairdo changed an actor’s life forever.

Arts/History: Smithsonian Magazine – December 2023

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Smithsonian Magazine (December 2023) – The latest issue features ‘Can A Robot Replace the World’s Greatest Artists?; A tiny reindeer enjoys its day in the sun; In Ukraine, war reshapes a Holocaust Memorial; the Rebirth of a Lost American Wine Region, and more…

Why Collectors Fall Head Over Heels for the ‘Inverted Jenny’ Stamp

Inverted Jenny

One of the rare 24-cent misprints sold at auction this week for a record-breaking $2 million

The Real History Behind Empress Joséphine in Ridley Scott’s ‘Napoleon’

Vanessa Kirby as Joséphine and Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon in Ridley Scott's Napoleon​​​​​​​

A new Hollywood epic traces Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise and fall through his checkered relationship with his first wife

Thailand Tour: Damnoen Saduak Floating Market

Wind Walk Travel Videos (November 22, 2023) – A boat tour of the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market, the largest and most popular floating market in Thailand. It is located in Ratchaburi province, about 100 kilometers southwest of Bangkok.

The market was established in the late 19th century by King Rama IV, who ordered the construction of a canal to connect two rivers. It consists of a network of canals where vendors sell various goods from their boats, such as fruits, vegetables, souvenirs, and street food.

Visitors can experience the colorful and lively atmosphere of the market by taking a boat ride along the canals or walking along the banks. Damnoen Saduak Floating Market is a unique and memorable way to experience the traditional Thai culture and lifestyle.

Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – December 2023

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HARPER’S MAGAZINE – DECEMBER 2023: This issue features The Hofmann Wobble – Wikipedia and the problem of historical memory; Your Mind’s in the Hands of Everything – Letting go of Philip Roth; Risky Disco – A sensory workshop bridges the gap; Occult Murder and Gospel Thrillers, and more…

The Hofmann Wobble

Wikipedia and the problem of historical memory

by Ben Lerner

At twenty-six, in 2006, the year before the iPhone launched, I found myself driving a red Subaru Outback—the color was technically “claret metallic,” the friend who’d lent me the car had told me, in case I ever wanted to touch up the paint—on Highway 12 in Utah. I was heading to the East Bay after a painful breakup in New York. I remember, wrongly, that I was listening to a book on tape, a work by a prominent linguist, as I moved through the alien landscape, jagged formations of red rock towering against a cloudless sky.

Your Mind’s in the Hands of Everything

Letting go of Philip Roth

by Hannah Gold

It is difficult to predict when one will spend the night at a hotel in Newark, let alone three, and uncommon to agree to such a scenario willingly. If you live there already, you stay home. If you’re there for a professional engagement, your boss made you go. If your flight has been canceled, you go there as a last resort. Whereas, though I felt compelled to be there, I couldn’t point to an authority outside of myself that had forced my hand. The room had been booked a week in advance.

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Nov 27, 2023

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The New Yorker – November 27, 2023 issue: The new issue‘s cover features Chris Ware’s “Harvest” – The artist discusses the rituals of gathering and building memories.

Joyce Carol Oates’s Relentless, Prolific Search for a Self

A blackandwhite photograph of Joyce Carol Oates by Andrea Modica.

In more than a hundred works of fiction, Oates has investigated the question of personality—while doubting that she actually has one.


By Rachel Aviv

hen Joyce Carol Oates was thirty-four, she started a journal. “Query,” she wrote on the first page. “Does the individual exist?” She felt that she knew little about herself—for instance, whether she was honest or a hypocrite. “I don’t know the answer to the simplest of questions,” she wrote. “What is my personal nature?”

Barbra Streisand’s Mother of All Memoirs

A portrait of Barbra Streisand. Photograph by Irving Penn  © Cond Nast.

In “My Name Is Barbra,” the icon takes a maximalist approach to her own life, studying every trial, triumph, and snack food of a six-decade career.

By Rachel Syme

Seventy years ago, before she was galactically famous, before she dropped an “a” from her first name, before she was a Broadway ingénue, before her nose bump was aspirational, before she changed the way people hear the word “butter,” before she was a macher or a mogul or a decorated matron of the arts, Barbra Streisand was, by her own admission, “very annoying to be around.” She was born impatient and convinced of her potential—the basic ingredients of celebrity, and of an exquisitely obnoxious child. When Streisand was growing up in Brooklyn, in the nineteen-forties, she used to crawl onto the fire escape of her shabby apartment building and conduct philosophical debates with her best friend, Rosyln Arenstein, who was a staunch atheist. 

The New York Times Magazine – Nov 19, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (November 17, 2023): The latest issue features How David Zaslav blew up Hollywood – The inside story of a novice movie mogul in an age of disruption, discontent and disaster ; Russell Brand’s Alternate Reality – The British entertainer built an army of fans with his conspiracy-minded podcast. Now, amid sex-assault claims against him, they’ve become his whole world; Sofia Coppola’s Subversive Search for Truth in ‘Priscilla’ – Hollywood is addicted to mythologizing biopics. ‘‘Priscilla’’ offers something different…

How David Zaslav Blew Up Hollywood

David Zaslav walking  in Manhattan.

A merger put him in the driver’s seat at Warner Brothers, one of the industry’s biggest studios. It has been a wild ride.

By Jonathan MahlerJames B. Stewart and Benjamin Mullin

It was April 2022, and David Zaslav had just closed the deal of a lifetime. From the helm of his relatively small and unglamorous cable company, Discovery, he had taken control of a sprawling entertainment conglomerate that included perhaps the most storied movie studio on the planet, Warner Brothers. The longtime New Yorker had always loved movies, and against the advice of several media peers, he had moved to Hollywood and taken over Jack Warner’s historic office, hauling the old mogul’s desk out of storage and topping it off with an old-time handset telephone. So far things were going great. He had met all the stars and players, was widely feted as the next in line to save the eternally struggling industry and was well into the process of renovating a landmark house in Beverly Hills. 

Sofia Coppola’s Subversive Search for Truth in ‘Priscilla’

A photo of illustration of actors playing famous characters in history.

Hollywood is addicted to mythologizing biopics. ‘‘Priscilla’’ offers something different.

By Rafaela Bassili

As with much of her other work, the opening of Sofia Coppola’s latest film, “Priscilla,” is all about textures. A pair of manicured feet sink into a shag carpet; a fingernail is carefully polished in red; we see the back of a prodigious black bouffant, then the dexterous painting of a dramatic cat eye with black liner. Priscilla Presley (Cailee Spaeny) paces around Graceland relentlessly. There’s nothing for her to do, and too much for her to process.

Previews: New Humanist Magazine – Winter 2023

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NEW HUMANIST MAGAZINE – WINTER 2023 ISSUE: The new issue features Pavan Amara on the new technologies revolutionising reproduction, Gabriele Di Donfrancesco on Europe’s battle over “family values” and Rachael Lennon on a decade of same-sex marriage, and a new column from Shaparak Khorsandi…