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Tag Archives: Borges

A Hitch in time

Sunday, May 15, 2022

On the late, great Christopher Hitchens, and the role the Falklands may have played in his political development. — For The Critic

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged 9/11, Admiral Graf von Spee, Adolf Hitler, Afghanistan, Africa, Alexander Haig, Argentina, Barack Obama, Battle Day, Britain, Caspar Weinberger, Christopher Hitchens, coffee, Commander Eric Hitchens, conservatives, Cossacks, Covid, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Cyprus, Denis MacShane, Falklands Radio, football, Goose Green, Hector Timerman, Holland, Human Rights Watch, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jacobo Timerman, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Jews, Jorge Videla, Journalism, La Opinion, Lebanon, Lincoln's Inn, Lt Nick Taylor, Margaret Thatcher, Nazis, New York, Nicholas Henderson, Palestine, Robert Cox, Ronald Reagan, Salman Rushdie, terrorism, The Critic, The Falklands War, the Inquisition, the Junta, the left wing, the Mediterranean, The Nation, The New Statesman, the Pacific, the Royal Navy, The Spectator, the UN, the Union Jack, Ukraine, Washington DC, WWI, WWII | Comments (0)

Booksheds

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

As Colombo emerges from the Covid lockdown, I go immediately to one of my favourite places. — For The Critic

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged Alfred Douglas, Andre Gide, Arthur C Clarke, bibliomania, books, bookshops, Ceylon, coconuts, Colombo, colonialism, Covid-19, Craig Raine, Cyril Connolly, David Blacker, David Kugultinov, David Nichol Smith, Dee Brown, Dervla Murphy, Dickens, Edmund Waller, education, EM Forster, English, fauna, Georges Bataille, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Harold Nicolson, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, Joan Collins, Joseph Conrad, Kalmykia, Lenin, libraries, Lionel Shriver, Louis Mountbatten, Madeleine Albright, Maradana, Michael Ondaatje, Nabokov, Peter Ackroyd, Richard Flanagan, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Sinhala, Sri Lanka, Tamil, Teilhard de Chardin, The Critic, the Duke of Pirajno, The New Yorker, Tom Wolfe | Comments (0)

Aguê the Sinister, also called Azizan

Sunday, May 17, 2020

Among the Ewe people of Togo (formerly Togoland), the village of Bé lies at the foot of the Tokoin plateau, between a stagnant lagoon and a sacred wood, the meagre remnant of an ancient equatorial forest that once covered the south of the country in its entirety. Here, the animist bokonon priests and priestesses of the python cult worship the forces of […]

Filed in Fictions | Also tagged Africa, animism, clothing, Dahomey, fear, Greenland, James Kirkup, Post-modern Bestiary, religion, sadness, snakes, Tété-Michel Kpomassie, Togo, translation | Comments (0)

The Pelican

Saturday, April 25, 2020

Or; Some Further Notes Towards the Bestiary To the researches of the antiquary and scholar Jorge Luis ‘Vintage’ Borges, a few points offer further context on that most peripatetic of birds in this, our present century. . Learned reports come from South Asia, where the spotted-bill Filipino pelican (phillipensis) is found, with no small irony, only in Cambodia, the Indian peninsular, and in Sri Lanka (or the contemporary […]

Filed in Fictions | Also tagged America, animals, army, babies, basketball, British Library, Cambodia, Captain Scott, children, Colombo, Corpus Christi College, daughters, death, Egypt, employment, fables, food, Gartagena, General John Guise, Hebrew, hieroglyphs, Horapollo, India, Jesuits, John Grisham, Joseph Hall, King Lear, murder, oil, pelican, Post-modern Bestiary, psychology, Roald Dahl, Spain, Sri Lanka, St James's Palace, St James's Park, St Jerome, stupidity, the Bible, The Spectator, Thomas Aquinas, US Supreme Court | Comments (0)

I am unimpresed by Brazilians

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Reviewing some photographs from South America.

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Barefoot, Barthes, Brazil, Chatwin, Christmas, cliché, Lionel Wendt, Orlando Azevedo, photography, Sunday Times (SL), Vilma Slomp, William Faulkner | Comments (0)