JOHN DREW

The Doppelgänger

It was actually a bit of a relief to sit on the terrace of the Gezira Pension and have a quiet breakfast before plunging back once more into the traffic of Cairo in search of a carriage to the museum.

2w ago

Utpal Dutt and the new dawn

The audience for the jatra was all any Marxist theatre director in Kolkata could have wished for.

3m ago

What is it to be a Professor?

In memory of the late Mike Franklin, 1949-2024

7m ago

No door

His five sons/ Were killed and the books...

1y ago

How to write a love song

500 years ago, Edmund Spenser wrote a poem to celebrate a wedding taking place beside the River Thames. Each stanza ends with the refrain: “Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song”.

1y ago

Eyeball to eyeball at Lords: A Bangladeshi occasion in a very English setting

35000 spectators turned out amid the colourful shamianas and flags to watch the one (and only) unofficial Test in Dhaka in January, 1977.

1y ago

In some corner of a foreign field: Rahmat Ali & the once and future Cambridge Majlis

The map is part of an exhibition arranged to mark the revival of the Cambridge Majlis, a society (dating from 1891) designed for students from all over the Subcontinent to meet socially to enjoy their commonalities and discuss and debate in a civil way their political differences.

1y ago

‘Plants of the Quran’ explores flora dating back 1400 years

Dr Shahina Ghazanfar, the author of a series of books on the flora of the Middle East who compiled this compendium, explains: “This is not a religious book but about history and culture. It promotes the pleasure of research and learning, I hope as much for my readers as for myself”. 

1y ago
March 3, 2018
March 3, 2018

BANERJEE VS. CHATTERJEE 1945

I know of Capt. Banerjee, Military Observer, only because he wrote feature articles for the Times of Saigon, edited by my father,

January 27, 2018
January 27, 2018

Musings on a Poet, a City and a Football Team

Alone upon the housetops, to the North

December 9, 2017
December 9, 2017

THE ENGLISHING OF 'OMAR KHAYYÁM

Ah, Moon of my Delight who know'st no wane,

November 18, 2017
November 18, 2017

A Welsh Poet Foresees His Death: Rakhine Province, 1944.

As many hundreds of thousands of refugees stream out of Rakhine, leaving behind family killed and homes reduced to ashes, it may seem, and maybe is, peculiarly insensitive, untimely and Eurocentric to refer to the death of one Welsh poet in their homeland nearly 75 years ago.

April 1, 2017
April 1, 2017

ARCADIA ON THE JALANGI

It was not all utopian: Jones expected his researches, like his law codes, to have practical benefits. While enjoying his Arcadia, he was

March 25, 2017
March 25, 2017

ARCADIA ON THE JALANGI

The Jalangiriver snakes across Bengal, as changeable as it is beautiful and impervious to the political divisions that would separate the eastern arm of its mother river Ganga from the western.

November 5, 2016
November 5, 2016

Into the Heart of Bengal

If literary delights are more to the taste than culinary, George Thompson englishes the improvised songs of the palky-bearers taking

October 29, 2016
October 29, 2016

Into the Heart of Bengal

“Most men carry weapons of defence with them. I carry none. A revolver was offered me before I started but I declined it. My

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