Contemporary Review articles from June 2004

Contemporary Review archives from June 2004

The word on the Arab street.
June 1, 2004... IT is going to be a hot summer in the Middle East. There is always foment and ferment, fuelled by angry talk in the mosques and the cafes, but this is something different. There are some other important mutterings--the slightly smug 'I told you...

Iraq: the Interim balance part I.
June 1, 2004... IRAQ is still a volatile and dangerous place. Its principal cities and provincial towns are awash with armed militias and foreign insurgents. Violent crime is endemic. What was, to all intents and purposes, a secular state is on the way to...

The decline of the Christian church in Australia.
June 1, 2004... 'I AM not a rapist'. May 8, 2003 was the first time in Australian history that a Governor-General (who was formerly an Anglican Archbishop) had had to make such a denial. Unbeknown to the Australian population, the Governor-General had been...

The Indo-Pakistan peace process and the Kashmir issue.
June 1, 2004... THE Indian and Pakistani leaders are making efforts to improve relations to bring lasting peace to the subcontinent. President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan has stated that it was time for Pakistan to look for a realistic solution to the Kashmir...

The rape of slave boys in Sudan.
June 1, 2004... AS HE began speaking, Majok lowered his small cocoa-coloured eyes and stared intensely at the ground. It was the summer of 2002 and I had just flown thousands of miles deep into the war zone of Sudan to interview former slaves. Majok, then...

Is Bob Dylan an artist?(Critical Essay)
June 1, 2004... BOB DYLAN invented a new creative medium when he fused poetical lyrics and rock 'n' roll to form what became known as 'rock music'. It was The Beatles who made rock accessible to the masses, but the idea of marrying significant words with...

Why atheism is unscientific.(Critical Essay)
June 1, 2004... A 'THINK TANK' closely connected to the Labour Government has advocated that atheism be included in the Religious Education curriculum that is studied in British schools. Central to the argument of this group is the idea that atheism is...

Charles Avison: discovering an Eighteenth-Century Musician.(Biography)
June 1, 2004... A BRIEF paragraph in the Newcastle Journal of 12 May, 1770 marked the passing of 'the most important English concerto composer of the eighteenth century and an original and influential writer on music': Thursday night died here Mr...

Normandy: 1066, 1944, and 2004.
June 1, 2004... NOS a Gulielmo victi victoris patriam liberavimus: the terse elegance of the Latin inscription outside the British War Cemetery in Bayeux carries us across a millennium of turbulent history from the Normandy of 1066 to the Normandy of 1944. We...

Understanding Islamist fundamentalism.(Martyrs. Innocence, Vengeance and Despair in the Middle East)(The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder)(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Martyrs. Innocence, Vengeance and Despair in the Middle East. Joyce M. Davis. Palgrave. [pounds sterling]18.99 ($24.95). 214 pages. ISBN 0-3122-9616-9. The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder. Bassam Tibi....

The background to the Bosnian war.(Bosnia-Herzegovina: The End of a Legacy)(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Bosnia-Herzegovina: The End of a Legacy. Neven Andjelic. Frank Cass. [pounds sterling]60.00. 228 pages. ISBN 0-7146-8431-7. Although the recent war in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1992-1995 has been covered extensively, very few studies focus...

A New Life of Dylan Thomas.(Dylan Thomas: A New Life)(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Dylan Thomas: A New Life. Andrew Lycett. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. [pounds sterling]20.00. xiv + 434 pages. ISBN 0-297-60793-6. The historian, A. J. P. Taylor, succinctly summed up the case for the prosecution against Dylan Thomas. The Welsh...

Douglas Hurd's fortunate life.(Memoirs)(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Memoirs. Douglas Hurd. Little Brown. [pounds sterling]20.00. x + 534 pages. ISBN 0-316-86147-2. When Douglas Hurd unsuccessfully sought the leadership of the Conservative Party in 1990, he was portrayed as a 'toff'. His elegant...

W. B. Yeats--a life finished.(W. B. Yeats: A Life. II: The Arch-Poet 1915-1939)(The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats Volume VIII: The Irish Dramatic Movement)(A W. B. Yeats Chronology)(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... W. B. Yeats: A Life. II: The Arch-Poet 1915-1939. R. F. Foster. Oxford University Press. xxiv + 798 pages. ISBN 0-19-818465-4. The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats Volume VIII: The Irish Dramatic Movement. Mary FitzGerald and Richard J. Finneran,...

Oscar Wilde's Secret Life.(The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde)(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde. Neil McKenna. Century. [pounds sterling]20.00. 535 pages. ISBN 0-7126-6986-8. The circumloquant litterae Oscariensis are, by any count, wildly in excess: the shelf bows beneath the bulky figure. Is Mr...

The rise and fall of the Roman Republic.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Rubicon: The Triumph and the Tragedy of the Roman Republic. Tom Holland. Little, Brown. [pounds sterling]20.00. 405 pages. ISBN 0-316-86130-8. Why Rome, anyway? In the eighth century BC there must have been lots of large villages in the...

Ireland's Protestants.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... A New Anatomy of Ireland: The Irish Protestants 1649-1770. Toby Barnard. Yale University Press. [pounds sterling]25.00. 489 pages. ISBN 0-300-09669-0. By the mid-eighteenth century there were about 400,000 Protestants in Ireland of which...

The world of paperbacks.
June 1, 2004... PIMLICO has recently published the first paperback edition of Virginia Woolf's A Passionate Apprentice ([pounds sterling]16.00) which contains her early journals (1897-1909) and her short journal entry entitled Carlyle's House and Other...

The Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... The Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact: A Diplomatic History, 1941-1945. Boris Slavinsky (Geoffrey Jukes, translator). Routledge. [pounds sterling]65.00. xxiii + 227 pages. ISBN 0-415-32292-8. The Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact of 1941 was a...

Trees.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Trees: Woodlands and Western Civilisation. Richard Hayman. Hambledon and London. [pounds sterling]19.95. x + 261 pages. ISBN 1-85285-299-2. Whether it is the site of the teddy bears' picnic, the place where novelists such as Anthony Trollope...

Dark Lover.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino. Emily W. Leider. Faber and Faber. [pounds sterling]20.00. xi + 514 pages. ISBN 0-571-21818-0. If Rudolph Valentino were alive he would probably be the Governor of California. He embodied in...

English Shops and Shopping.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... English Shops and Shopping: An Architectural History. Kathryn A. Morrison. Yale University Press. [pounds sterling]30.00. viii + 343 pages. ISBN 0-300-10219-4. This magnificent historical guide is based on a survey of retail buildings begun in...

The Years of Hunger.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933. R.W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft. Palgrave Macmillan. [pounds sterling]85.00. xvii + 555 pages. ISBN 0-333-31107-8. This, the fifth volume in Palgrave's impressive series, The...

Intelligence in War.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda. John Keegan. Hutchinson. [pounds sterling]25.00. xix + 443 pages. ISBN 0-09-180229-6. During the Boer War the then Secretary of State for War stood up in the Commons and...

Inside Putin's Russia.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Inside Putin's Russia. Andrew Jack. Granta Books. [pounds sterling]17.99. xvii + 350 pages. ISBN 1-86207-640-5. Books about Russia by English writers have been a staple ingredient in Anglo-Russian relations from the sixteenth century. The...

Modern Iran since 1921.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Modern Iran since 1921: The Pahlavis and After. Ali M. Ansari. Pearson Longman. [pounds sterling]16.99 p.b. xiii + 272 pages. ISBN 0-582-35685-7. The author of this history teaches in the University of Durham and argues that 'few countries have...

Reform! The Fight for the 1832 Reform Act.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Reform! The Fight for the 1832 Reform Act. Edward Pearce. Jonathan Cape. [pounds sterling]20.00. v + 343 pages. ISBN 0-224-06199-2. The first thing to be said about this study is that the author is a journalist, not an historian. His argument...

The Authentic Gospel of Jesus.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... The Authentic Gospel of Jesus. Geza Vermes. Allen Lane. [pounds sterling]20.00. xviii + 446 pages. ISBN 0-713-9957-X. The quest for the 'historical' Jesus, or in this case, the 'authentic' message which He brought is as old as the desire for a...

Royal Warriors: A Military History of the British Monarchy.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Royal Warriors: A Military History of the British Monarchy. Charles Carlton. Pearson Longman. [pounds sterling]19.99. vi + 184 pages. ISBN 0-582-47265-2. Tony Blair's absurd reference to British troops as 'my troops' violated one of the few...

Dante Metamorphoses: Episodes in a Literary Afterlife.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Dante Metamorphoses: Episodes in a Literary Afterlife. Eric G. Haywood, editor. Four Courts Press, Dublin. [pounds sterling]55.00. 252 pages. ISBN 1-85182-662-9. The nine scholarly essays in this collection, published for the Foundation for...

Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution. Vera Shevzov. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]30.00. xiv + 35 pages. ISBN 0-19-515465-7. This study, which originated with O.U.P. New York, is concerned with the 'largest Christian culture...

The Longman Handbook of Twentieth Century Europe.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... The Longman Handbook of Twentieth Century Europe. Chris Cook and John Stevenson. Pearson Longman. [pounds sterling]21.99 p.b. ix + 404 pages. ISBN 0-582-23508-1. This valuable work aims at giving readers 'a convenient reference work for both...

Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema. Jeffrey Vance. Harry N. Abrams. [pounds sterling]29.95. 400 pages. ISBN 0-8109-4532-0. Through the international appeal of silent films, Charlie Chaplin was, in his portrayal of 'the Tramp' in the 1920s, the...

Behind Locked Doors.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Behind Locked Doors: A History of Papal Elections. Frederic J. Baumgartner. Palgrave Macmillan. [pounds sterling]19.99. 272 pages ISBN 0-312-29463-8. The author assumed there would be a papal election before this book appeared but even if his...

The Alphabet.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... The Alphabet: Unravelling the Mystery of the Alphabet from A to Z. David Sacks. Hutchinson. [pounds sterling]12.99. xvii + 395 pages. ISBN 0-09-179506-0. This book, first published in the U.S., began life as a series of twenty-six articles in...

London and the Culture of Homosexuality.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885-1914. Matt Cook. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]45.00. xiv + 223 pages. ISBN 0-521-82207-6. This study grew out of a doctoral thesis and takes as its starting point the Criminal Law...

The Evolution of the English Churches.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... The Evolution of the English Churches 1500-2000. Doreen Rosman. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]50.00 (US$75.00). xiv + 399 pages. ISBN 0-521-64556-5. This survey history is designed as a general introduction to the development of...