The fashion for fascism: Review of two recent books on Italian fascism

Mussolini in Myth and Memory: The First Totalitarian Dictator, by Paul Corner, Oxford University Press, 179 pp, £20, ISBN: 978-0192866646The Pope At War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini & Hitler, by David I Kertzer, Oxford University Press, 621 pp, £25,...

Translation: Gramsci, Buttigieg and James Joyce

Translator’s Introduction It is, I believe necessary to rescue Joyce from the industry he created. I don’t know of any other writer who who has given employment to so many scholars with the possible exception of Shakespeare, who has had a longer run at it. Joyce...

Review: The Tailor Of Ulm

The Tailor of Ulm (Il Sarto Di Ulm) by Lucio Magri (translated by Patrick Camiller) Honeymooning in 1979 on a package holiday to the Hotel Alaska, Rimini (it’s surprising how attractive the word Alaska sounds on a hot July day in Italy), I became friends with a man...

Savita Halappanavar and the Doctor’s Plague

Originally published here on Friday 23 November 2012 When my sister was born my mother began to haemorrhage badly and was in danger of bleeding to death. My father and my aunt (a nurse who qualified in England) pleaded with the doctor to carry out a hysterectomy -...