Berfrois

Turmoil in 19th Century Spain

Turmoil in 19th Century Spain

The analysis begins judiciously with the war of 1793-95 and its aftermath...

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What made Diogenes Laertius so lucky?

What made Diogenes Laertius so lucky?

Poor Diogenes Laertius. He gets no respect. A “perfect ass”—“asinus germanus”—one nineteenth-century scholar called him. “Dim-witted,” said Nietzsche.

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Exquisite Rot

Exquisite Rot

There is a tale, perhaps apocryphal, in which Fra Damiano da Bergamo looks on as emperor Charles V — motto: Plus Ultra, “further beyond” — sands away at an area of intarsiated wood from a recently completed choir...

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There’s no return from ’89…

There’s no return from ’89…

On 18th March 1921 the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the Paris Commune was marked in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Newspapers were emblazoned with headlines decrying the brutal suppression of the heroic Communards...

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Cold War Hysteria in Mexico

Cold War Hysteria in Mexico

In Mariano Azuela’s bestselling novel about the Mexican Revolution, Los de Abajo (The Underdogs) (1915), the revolutionaries who set out to eradicate the corruption and decadence of the Porfirian government themselves...

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Father’s Furniture

Father’s Furniture

It was because my father’s health had deteriorated to the point that he could no longer live alone that I came to possess his copy of Chinese Household Furniture, the Dover paperback edition with the pale yellow cover.

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Judie Newman on Harriet Beecher Stowe

Judie Newman on Harriet Beecher Stowe

“So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!” Abraham Lincoln’s apocryphal greeting to Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862 has become known in literary history, after the colossal impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin...

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‘Beethoven’s music was more exciting when he was for Napoleon, rather than against him’

‘Beethoven’s music was more exciting when he was for Napoleon, rather than against him’

Beethoven was regarded as enough of a friend to the imperial family that, in 1808, Napoleon’s brother, Jerome Bonaparte, then king of Westphalia...

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Classified: Bears

Classified: Bears

As any good high school student should know, the beaks of Galápagos “finches” (in fact the islands’ mockingbirds) helped Darwin to develop his ideas about evolution.

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Revolution, the Lightning

Revolution, the Lightning

It is often observed that the French Revolution was a revolution of scientists. Nourished by airy abstractions and heartfelt cries to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, its leaders sought a society grounded, not in God or tradition.

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‘The Russian Revolution reshaped global time and space’

‘The Russian Revolution reshaped global time and space’

Over the past one hundred years, some 20,000 books on the Russian Revolution have been published, roughly six thousand of them in English.

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‘Many interests united literary supporters of Vichy’

‘Many interests united literary supporters of Vichy’

What are the responsibilities of scholars and artists in a time of political crisis and militant nationalism? This dilemma confronts us today, just as it did French writers during the Second World War. 

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The History of 16th-Century Narcoleptic Walruses

The History of 16th-Century Narcoleptic Walruses

Magnus wanted to present the North as an impenetrable region of wonders and marvels — flesh-eating Scricfinns, magicians, vast whirlpools, and flaming volcanoes — at the very edge of the known world.

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