I had the chance to interview David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, yesterday. Despite the fact by this stage he’s probably sick to the back teeth of talking about his novel (this very entertaining book has just been released in paperback), he was still willing to seriously engage with the questions. Hope to have the […]

It seems President Bush is living up to his promise to spend the “political capital” he believed he earned by winning last November’s election. Today’s New York Times reported that the controversial Republican-championed Bankruptcy Bill is set to pass. In the current situation, if someone declares personal bankruptcy in the United States, banks and credit […]

The following comment was received in response to last week’s post:Knowing that this particular blogger is not preoccupied with political correctness, I’m curious as to why he decided to assign the feminine gender to the “leftish reader”? Is it because this blogger believes that the “leftish reader” is happy to complacently identify with any criticism […]

Did I somehow imply that I would resume my argument contra Todd on Friday? I meant Sunday�Friday was not a convenient day for critiquing the Weltanschauung of a leading French intellectual.To recap: Emmanuel Todd in After the Empire has introduced us to this strange little device for predicting the shape of societies as they enter […]

Emmanuel Todd’s After the Empire, which was a bestseller in France, is a somewhat worrying tract. Not that its message that the United States faces an inevitable decline, dragged down by economic profligacy and imperial overstretch, is particularly new or shocking. No, what is disturbing about this book is less its chronicling of American dysfunction […]

The new issue of ThreeMonkeysOnline is available just a click away. Plenty of substantial pieces, including interviews with Jim Crace, author of titles such as Quarantine, Being Dead and Six; Asne Seierstad, author of The Bookseller of Kabul and A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal; and Andrew Loog Oldham, the music svengali who […]

Well, after I put the boot into Enda Kenny on Friday, the guy goes and proves himself to be a regular hero, pulling a woman from a minibus just before the vehicle rolled down an embankment. And he declines to make a big deal about it. See here for the story.

I hope to add a lenghthyish post later on this week–I’ve just finished Emmanuel Todd’s After the Empire, which I found interesting and infuriating in equal measure. I’ll explain why in due course–let’s say Thursday?But I’m currently writing up a few reviews for the main site, which should also appear this week.

I suppose that the Northern Bank robbery and the subsequent investigation into money laundering has become such a major crisis for Sinn F�in for three reasons. First, and probably least important, was the sheer size of the haul. That was guaranteed to generate headlines. Second, now that the armed struggle is over/suspended, the traditional rationale […]