Hiroshima
Hiroshima and the continuing urgency of the atomic age
In August 1945, Group Captain Leonard Cheshire was stationed on the Pacific island of Tinian as an official British observer…
The race against Hitler to build the first nuclear bomb
The bomb was necessary to the Allies, but still horrified those responsible for its development – many of them refugees from Nazism
Any form of saturation bombing is a stain on humanity
Even before the dropping of ‘Little Boy’, the moral line was crossed with the destruction of almost every major Japanese city by incendiary and cluster bombs filled with napalm
In search of kindred spirits: An Absence of Cousins, by Lore Segal, reviewed
When Ilka Weisz, a young refugee from Vienna, accepts a teaching post in smalltown Connecticut, she struggles to make friends in the close-knit academic community
Richard Flanagan rails against wrongs ‘too vast to have a name’
‘Why do we do what we do to each other?’ he asks, citing among many atrocities the dropping of the atom bomb and the genocide of aboriginal Tasmanians
Finding le mot juste
No one ever raised a statue to a translator, disgruntled adepts of that art sometimes complain. I beg to differ,…
Japanese puzzle: how can an advanced, dynamic country function with such an ancient population?
When Japan hosts the Rugby Union World Cup next year, and still more so the summer Olympics in 2020, all…
Nuclear reaction
The 70th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has produced some predictable wailing and gnashing of teeth about the horrors of…
Nuclear overreaction
When I was growing up in the 1970s, my three main fears were: being blown up by the IRA; being…
Selective memory
It’s 70 years since the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and yet there has been no rush to…
Death by politics
Dead Sheep is a curious dramatic half-breed that examines Geoffrey Howe’s troubled relationship with Margaret Thatcher. Structurally it’s a Mexican…
Evil under the sun
At the dark heart of this dark book is a startling fact: Joseph Conrad was employed to steam up the…
