Things don’t usually fall apart completely in Britain and the centre holds. In the mid-seventeenth century, however, civil war raged across the islands. Military rule in England was followed by the conquest of Ireland and Scotland, paving the way for the Union. Michael Braddick, reviewing Ian Gentles’s The New Model Army, thinks there are lessons here for our “dysfunctional” democracy. This week the TLS features several meditations on times of civil war.
On May 24th, an eighteen-year-old gunman shot and killed nineteen children and two adults at Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas. The horrific spree came just ten days after thirteen people were shot—ten of them killed—at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, by a self-professed white supremacist. In the past two months, Americans have also been confronted with mass shootings at a church, a flea market, and inside a subway car during the morning rush-hour. The magazine’s cover for the June 6, 2022, issue, is by the artist Eric Drooker, who echoes the weary rage of many when he says, “I hastily scrawled this image, wondering, Why are Americans so infatuated with guns in the first place? What are they so afraid of?”
Times Literary Supplement, May 27, 2022 – @TheTLS, featuring @NshShulman on the Queen; @nclarke14 on Melvyn Bragg; @richardlea on nuclear power; Claire Lowdon on Elif Batuman; @RohanMaitzen on Rosalind Brackenbury; @rinireg on abortion – and more.
Our new issue is now online, ft. @_jamesmeek on civil wars, @HazelCarby on the silencing of indigenous voices, Jan-Werner Müller on Europe after the invasion, Anne Enright on Sandymount Strand and a cover by Helen Napper.https://t.co/lihVxAaGKDpic.twitter.com/7VXNJPpTYE
Times Literary Supplement, May 20, 2022 – This week’s @TheTLS, featuring @wmarybeard on Roman souvenirs; @EdwardDocx on Boris Johnson and contempt; @pwilcken on Operation Car Wash; @AdamSJFoulds on music and conflict; @_Poots_ on Leslie Thomas QC – and more
It is thought that cats lived alongside people for thousands of years, hunting the rodents that inevitably accompany human settlements, before they deigned to become domesticated—a state that many cat owners can attest feels provisional to this day. One research paper on the history of the house cat observes, “Let us just say that our cats do not take instruction well. Such attributes suggest that whereas other domesticates were recruited from the wild by humans who bred them for specific tasks, ancestors of domestic cats most likely chose to live among humans because of opportunities they found for themselves.”
Times Literary Supplement May 13, 2022 – Raphael: worn out by love, or work? | James Hall [reviews] Antonio Forcellino’s newly translated biography of the “most rounded, efficient and consistently accomplished of Renaissance artists”
Fiona Davis, author of THE MAGNOLIA PALACE, discusses art, history, and writing with Xavier F. Salomon, Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator at The Frick Collection.
They speak in the Fragonard room at Frick Madison, the temporary home of The Frick Collection.
About THE MAGNOLIA PALACE Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue, returns with a tantalizing novel about the secrets, betrayal, and murder within one of New York City’s most impressive Gilded Age mansions.