We must all examine our values and actions in relation to vulnerable populations, writes Iain Overton
Literature
Stefano Goodman explains how impairment can lead to sudden physical reliance on strangers – and how this shapes our personalities
If voters can't be scared by the threat of the 'woke left' devaluing their house – they might be scared by it devaluing their childhood, writes Graham Williamson
The decision to alter Roald Dahl's texts to make them more inclusive misses the mark – and ignores wider failures of diversity in children's publishing, writes Sian Norris
Plenty of people like to claim "1984" - but who deserves it?
‘As sure as guns is guns, if we let in coloured labour, they’ll swallow us. They hate us. All the other colours hate the white. And they’re only waiting till we haven’t got the pull over them. They’re only waiting. And then what about poor little Australia?’
In 1741, the exalted members of the Bordeaux Royal Academy of Sciences met to consider sixteen essays written in response to the following question: ‘What is the physical cause of the Negro’s color, the quality of [the Negro’s] hair, and the degeneration of both [Negro hair and skin]?’
On a Sunday in the summer of 1970, we were all herded up to the little church in Cúil Aodha for Mass. We were city kids sent to this small and remote village in County Cork to learn Irish from the native speakers. Their little chapel was gray, pebble-dashed, with no steeple, more like a […]
The post Ireland’s Coming of Age and Mine appeared first on The New York Review of Books.
John Banville’s first novel, Nightspawn, published more than fifty years ago, is set in Greece, which was then ruled by a military junta. The Irish protagonist, Benjamin White, is asked, “As a visitor, Benjamin, what do you think of the situation here, I mean the political situation?” He shrugs: “I’m not a political animal.” In […]
The post Scenes of the Crime appeared first on The New York Review of Books.
Stephen Unwin explores how the famed author's views about disability were typical of a growing intellectual endorsement of the dangerous ideology of eugenics in the early 20th century