Last week, as a consequence of humanity's continual struggle against tyranny and despotism, approximately 42 Kurds were killed by the Turkish air force; 81 Iranians were executed (many more also suffered amputations); while hundreds of Syrian civilians are still being massacred daily (totalling around 40,000 in the last couple of...

Barack Obama came into office having promised to distance America from the neoconservative philosophy that dominated George W. Bush's presidency. As a senator, he had opposed the Iraq war, and during his presidential campaigning he vowed to negotiate peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as extend an open...

The year 2012 marks the centenary of Bram Stoker's death. Until now, his seminal novel Dracula remains the dominant focus of interest in him both as a writer, and as an individual. However, with the release of a long-lost journal containing 310 individual entries of varying lengths, written across an...

Numerous critics have been praising Bob Dylan's 35th studio album Tempest as the finest record he has made in a long time. Lyrically, it is a Dylan chef-d'oeuvre. Lines breeze out of him as he maximizes wordplay, and growls through his ballads. It is the album of a man who...

Despite having burned an estimated ninety per cent of his work, and publishing just a few short stories and novellas during his lifetime; Franz Kafka remains one of the greatest Jewish writers. Regardless of this literary prestige, there sits in a dirty apartment in Tel Aviv,...

Robin Cook once commented that reforming the House of Lords was like Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot - "(it) never arrives and some are rather doubtful whether it even exists". Certainly this seemed the case under New Labour, who removed all but 92 hereditary peers and failed to change little...

Miles Davis once said of Michael Bloomfield, that "when he plays for blacks, his shit comes out black, and that if one put (Bloomfield) with James Brown, he'd be a motherfucker". Davis would later go on to recommend Bloomfield to Woody Herman, leading to some staggering recordings with Herman's jazz...

'Some cultures are admirable, others are vile'.
- Brian Barry Culture and Equality, 2011

"Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism"
- David Cameron Munich Speech, Saturday 5th February 2011

Multiculturalism is often mistaken...

"Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput"
- Alan Sugar, February 2005

The other night, I was watching my family all hustled together as they watched The Apprentice and was overcome with a desire to throw up things I'd forgotten ever having eaten.

This was...

"If I know better than you know what I am up to, it is only because I spend more time with myself than you do."

― Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves

I was appalled. Not only had the young lady behind the counter in Sainsbury's sniggered at...