Film: “Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man”
There’s always a danger in making a feature-length movie to expand upon a successful TV series: The narrative arc of [...]
Review: Reservoir Bitches
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2025 after its debut in 2024, Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda [...]
Dry plaster & dandelions
Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci chose to paint The Last Supper on dry plaster instead of the conventional method, [...]
Character witnesses
The other day I was thinking to myself, the way a totally normal, not guilty, super innocent person does, about [...]
Don’t speak
Whenever I make that fateful trip to my local Rome hospital to have my ruined eyes examined, my mostly steady [...]
Hong Kong attraction, part 5
After I stepped across the threshold of the legendary Mandarin Oriental, in Hong Kong, everything changed. That very long journey [...]
Cool cats of Whitehall
For centuries, Britain’s government has battled an unrelenting enemy that multiplies rapidly and invades the corridors of power of the [...]
Review: The Florentine Papers: A Novel
If you are a fan of lean, hard-boiled prose, you won’t find it in The Florentine Papers: A Novel, by [...]
Keeping Pesach
Passover is one of my favourite Jewish holidays. Partly because it's an easy one to explain to a Christian. Explaining [...]
Playground stories
Recently, I gave my students an assignment to interview someone in their major field. I wanted to introduce a skill [...]
Carnival time
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, the 40-day period of prayer and penitence in preparation for the feast of [...]