January 2018

H. G. Wells — The War of the Worlds

  Reading The Island of Doctor Moreau, I thought it must be the darkest of Wells’s science fiction stories, but The War of the Worlds represents some solid competition on that front. As stories of alien invasion go, it’s remarkably bleak and lacking in heroism. After the aliens land in the suburbs of London (the …

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1898 and the Spanish-American War

  1898 is quite a memorable year for one big reason; it marks the start and end of the Spanish-American war, the first adventure of the USA’s imperial phase, and the making of one of its most zeitgeist-setting leaders, Theodore Roosevelt. On the plus side this means the year is easier to research, but on …

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Oscar Wilde – The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Oscar in his third and final act was perhaps on the surface a different sort of animal; withdrawn and solemn, altogether lacking in the choice witticisms that made his name. I like to think that nothing had changed – here is the honesty and compassion that I see in his essays and his novel, just …

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Elsewhere in 1898

 War The Spanish—American War The Battle of Omdurman: British and Egyptian troops defeat Sudanese tribesmen. 700 Greeks and 15 Englishmen are slaughtered by the Turks in Heraklion, Greece, leading to the establishment of the autonomous Cretan State. Other Conflict (inter-human) Émile Zola’s “J’accuse…!” letter is published on the front page of the Paris daily newspaper …

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