The Telegraph is live at the Telegraph Hay Festival.
The Salon reports on ‘Stephen from Baltimore’s’ attempt to re-write James Joyce’s Ulysees on Twitter:
‘All volunteers need to do is choose a section, or several, from the 18 episodes, structured loosely on Homer’s epic, “then thoughtfully, soulfully, fancifully compose a series of 4-6 tweets to represent that section.”‘
The Guardian’s Digested Read, by John Crace, turns its cutting eye on Jeffery Deaver’s new Bond book, Carte Blanche.
‘On his way out of M’s office, Bond noticed an attractive young agent chatting to Moneypenny. Ding-dong! Stockings or tights? “The name is Bond, James Bond,” he said.
“Ophelia Maidenstone,” she replied. “I’ve split up with my fiancee. Would you like to take me out to dinner?” Bond smiled to himself. He might have been 30 for the past 50 years
but he hadn’t lost his edge. Yet an eighth sense told him that however much she might enjoy spending the night with him, he ought to save her from himself. “I’ve got to go home to my Chelsea
flat to put out the recycling.” he said. “But have a bottle of Chablis on me.”’
Writing in the Telegraph, Michael Burleigh reviews Francis
Fukuyama’s latest book on the origins of modern government.
‘For sure revolutions and wars would continue, whether after 1806 or 1989, but the fundamental matter of the best form of government was settled: sooner or later the laggards would straggle in to the wagon-camp of liberal democracy. Events in the Balkans in the Nineties seemed to disprove Fukuyama’s thesis; those across the Middle East in the current decade may yet confirm it.
In his latest book, an impressive blend of anthropology, social biology, history and political science, Fukuyama goes in search of the origins of modern government – something so essential to our lives that we forget how arduous it was to create in the first place, assuming conscious acts were involved rather than necessity.
Comments