Scroll down to find a full archive of all my posts, by topic and title.
Like what I write?
Subscribe.
Archive
Before the Fall: Notes on The Dawn of Everything
Miseducation Misadventures
Miseducation Misadventures is a short series about my experiences in the crazy world of teaching.
Books
- The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
- I’m finally reading… Ruth Rendell
- What I’m Reading: Judge Dredd Case Files 03
- What I’m Reading: Foundation
- What I’m Reading: Asian Odyssey
- What I’m Reading: The Only Good Indians
- The Three-Body Problem (1) Betraying Humanity
- The Three-Body Problem (2) The Flickering Universe (Premium)
- Framing devices in “The Call of Cthulhu”
- Review: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
- Review: Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
- Nova by Samuel R Delany
- Review: The Unspoken Name and The Thousand Eyes, by AK Larkwood
- Review: The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
- 10 underrated SF novels with great concepts
- The Real Macbeth
- Half a Review of Half a King
- How Dune gets away with it
- And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov (Premium)
- The Don Flows Home to the Sea by Mikhail Sholokhov (Premium)
- Jerusalem by Alan Moore
- George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
- >Part One: Is 1984 plausible?
- >Part Two: Is 1984 good? (Premium)
- >Part Three: Conclusion (Premium)
- >The Darkest Timeline: Oceania, 1945-1984
- John le Carré
- Dubious Crusades: John le Carré in the 1960s
- A Perfect Nemesis: John le Carré in the 1970s
- Glasnost Pilgrims: John le Carré in the late 1980s
On the screen
- Games
- Games that warped my young mind: Tiberian Sun (1: Setting and Story)
- Games that warped my young mind: Tiberian Sun (2) Cutscenes and Gameplay
- Games that warped my young mind: Red Alert 2
- Games that warped my young mind: Age of Empires 2
- Ages and Ages (Appendix to AoE2)
- What I’m playing at: Disco Elysium
- TV
- Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance (Guest Review)
- Goodbye Uhtred (Review: The Last Kingdom and Seven Kings Must Die)
- Review: The Witcher: Blood Origin
- Why Andor is different
- Game of Thrones: the final season was OK, actually
- Game of Thrones – Appendix: An alternate ending
- Squid Game, like capitalism, is equal and voluntary – in theory
- Movies
- Dr Zhivago – is it accurate? (1) The Old Regime
- Dr Zhivago – is it accurate? (2) World War & October Revolution
- Dr Zhivago – is it accurate? (3) Civil War
- What makes a good historical movie?
- Dune: Part Two – a bold, brilliant adaptation
- Screen Adaptations of Dune
- No, Rebel Moon is not really like Star Wars
- The Decline of the Villain (2014)
- Why Jeremy Clarkson hated V for Vendetta
- Nine things that inspired Star Wars
- Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood
- From Pearl Harbor to Eternity
Culture & Politics
- Chorus of the Whiny Racists
- Israel invades Lebanon… But the headlines tell a different story
- Genuine Concerns
- Tradition ain’t what it used to be
- Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and the 1960s (2014)
- There’s no such thing as ‘Too many people’ (2014)
- Dead Kennedys Vs Live Reagan (2013)
- Featured Song: ‘Tangled up in Blue’
- Advice for Bloggers
- Rules Update for Insurrection (Board Game)
“Artificial Intelligence”
- In Pictures: Welcome to the Interslop
- ‘AI’ clogs the internet with meaningless crap
- 2 years on, has the ‘AI Revolution’ changed your life?
- Can a machine write a story?
History
- Revolution in a Chinese village: Notes on Fanshen by William Hinton
- Notes on the Medieval World (1) How Rome Fell
- The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
- 5 ‘weird little guys’ of the Russian Civil War
- Review: Nine Days That Shook England by H Fagan
- Report & photos from a water charges protest, December 2014
- The Italian Fascist War on Ethiopia (Review of Prevail by Jeff Pearce)
- History’s Greatest (W)Hit(e)s
- CLR James on Kwame Nkrumah
- What if Michael Collins had survived the Irish Civil War?
- Beevor’s Russia (Book Review):
- >So far, Beevor’s new book is terrible
- >Part One: A Crude Demonology
- >Part Two: Back-dating Terror
- >Part Three: The Myth of Exceptional Violence (Premium)
- Cuba Libre by Tony Perrotet
- FAQ: Was Tsar Nicholas II a good person?
- War in Ukraine
- Iraq 2003 v Ukraine 2022: The Headlines, side by side
- Stalingrad: How the Red Army Triumphed by Michael K Jones
- War and Revolution: Rethinking the 20th Century by Domenico Losurdo
- FAQ: Were the Nazis Socialist?
- Appeasing Hitler by Tim Bouverie (Or, why I gave up after 70 pages)
- The Bloody White Baron by James Palmer
- Railways in Ireland, 1906
- Trotsky (2017) – is it accurate? [Spoiler: lol, jesus no] (Premium)
- Tukhachevsky’s Flying Tank
- In the Name of the Working Class by Sándor Kópacsi
- 1940 – Maps for an invasion of Ireland
- Pseudohistory:
- The Manchukuo Mystery
Sláine
A review of the 40-year career of 2000 AD hero Sláine.
Celtic Communism?
In Celtic Communism? I start from James Connolly’s claim that Gaelic Ireland was a socialist society, and assess whether that’s true.
School Resources
Some resources for secondary school teachers to use in classrooms.
- Children of Men (film)
- Ancient and Celtic Ireland
- Fascism in Italy
- The Irish Famine
- ‘The Sun’ by Benjamin Zephaniah (poetry)
- ‘Questions from a worker who reads’ by Bertold Brecht
- The Middle Ages in Europe
- Strongbow (The Middle Ages and Ireland)
- Cogadh Cathartha na Spáinne
- The Spanish Civil War
- Nazi Germany
- King Lear
The 1919 Review 