The Great Political Fictions: Fathers and Son...

An extra episode to accompany our Films of Ideas series: David explores The Designated Mourner by Wallace Shawn, the writer and co-star of My Dinner with Andre. How did a play first performed in 1996 turn into a prophetic text for our times? How was it shaped by Shawn’s experienc ...  Afficher plus

Today it’s the last in our series of live episodes recorded at the Regent Street Cinema in London: David talks to film director and campaigner Beeban Kidron about Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), a much-loved film that’s also chock full of interesting ...  Afficher plus

In all of the thousands upon thousands of books written about Nazi Germany, it’s easy to lose track of some basic questions. What did Germans think they were fighting for? Why did they support the war? How did they (whether the they were soldiers fighting in France or Russia, wom ...  Afficher plus

In the decades following the American Civil War, several of the generals who had laid down their swords picked up their pens and published accounts of their service in the conflict. In The Generals’ Civil War: What Their Memoirs Can Teach Us Today (University of North Carolina Pr ...  Afficher plus

For centuries, the bildungsroman, or novel of education, has offered a window into a formative period of life—and, by extension, into the historical moment in which it’s set. Vinson Cunningham sent the draft of “Great Expectations,” a book loosely based on his experience on Ba ...

Tolstoy was one of the greatest writers of all time. His books have constructed how we think about Russian imperial history. But he was not just an observer, he was also a participant. As a young man, Tolstoy fought in several of Russia's imperial wars– against the Chechens and t ...  Afficher plus