Richard FarrMar 17Testing, testing ... coronavirus and a dangerous drug called FictionA lot of people are being tested for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. (Not enough in my neck of the planet, thanks to our communicable-disease-in-...
Richard FarrJan 3It was a peach while it lastedFor three years now, an oily moral poison has been leaking from the wrecked hull of that stately grand dame of the democratic oceans, the USS White House. Th...
Richard FarrNov 25, 2019Italo Calvino on how to be an efficient writer“Every morning I tell myself, Today has to be productive—and then something happens that prevents me from writing. Today . . . what is there that I have to d...
Richard FarrNov 23, 2019Happy birthday George Eliot!One of the most luminous, most humane intelligences in history was born two hundred years ago today: But the effect of her being on those around her was inca...
Richard FarrNov 18, 2019English and its HistorieWhy is English so much simpler in grammar and richer in vocabulary than so many other languages? (Why does the OED need twenty volumes?) I’ve been reading Ro...
Richard FarrNov 5, 2019Borne back into the pastApparently the new season of The Crown will take us into the 1960s and actor David Wilmott will play union leader Arthur Scargill. This is disturbing. As a s...
Richard FarrNov 4, 2019Macboris: a fragment from a lost play about power and nihilismDiscovered recently among the manuscripts of that great English dramatist Willie A. Peakshamers: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this Brexit p...
Richard FarrOct 26, 2019Rammed with tourists?Today the Guardian – or Grauniad, as we lovers of its many typos call it – recommends the lovely Devon village of Tavistock as “not rammed with tourists.” I...
Richard FarrSep 20, 2019Climbing Pen y FanThe highest point in the Brecon Beacons, and Wales, and southern Britain. It was supposed to be raining. The wind was ferocious, but we could see for a hundr...
Richard FarrMay 17, 2019The time traveler’s dilemma and techno-cultural prejudiceWhat if you had to move – not to another city or country but to either the future or the past? I ran across this Rawlesian thought experiment recently, and w...
Richard FarrMar 1, 2019Those who would be kingAuthoritarianism is on the rise … measurably. Nobel prize-winning economist Angus Deaton has said that one of the most fundamental determiners of your life’s...
Richard FarrFeb 28, 2019The brutal irony of brutalised BrutalistsIn this article in the Guardian on the subject of famous “Brutalist” buildings under threat from demolition, I note with interest and satisfaction the immine...
Richard FarrDec 17, 2018Brilliant idiomOver dinner in London, a fascinating discussion is launched by my American friend John A., who has been in-country for months but is struggling still with th...
Richard FarrOct 11, 2018Pry social media from your own trembling hands?Should you place a hood over the evil Facebook, blast Twitter out of its tree, and rip up all your Instagrams? You really should, according to Jaron Lanier’s...
Richard FarrAug 24, 2018Speaking as a human being; on identity (politics) and intersectionality.Excellent Op-Ed in the New York Times from a couple of weeks ago by (my once-upon-a-time teacher) Kwame Anthony Appiah, applying his usual clear, precise, ur...
Richard FarrAug 22, 2018A Dad named Denis(ova)Not an actual picture of the individual in question Fascinating – working in the Russian cave where bones of Denisovans were first found, a team from Svante ...