Category: Pedagogy

I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. — W. H. Auden 1. What is a Jew? ‘Their barbaric acts are acts of evil. There are not two sides to these events. There is no question of balance. I stand with Israel. We stand … Continue reading 10 Questions About Gaza

Notes to Poetry — 19 May, 2023 by Simon Elmer Paperback £15.00 Hardback (forthcoming)     Look Inside Description Like the samizdat ‘self-publications’ that were circulated in the Eastern Bloc between the 1950s and 1980s, this book tries to retain the values of poetry in a world in which poetry no longer has any accepted … Continue reading Notes to Poetry

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris, called the Sacré-Cœur, is a Roman Catholic church and minor basilica. A popular landmark in Paris, the basilica is located at the summit of the butte Montmartre, the highest point in the city. Sacré-Cœur is a double monument, political and cultural: a national penance for both the … Continue reading The Sacred Heart of Architecture: Lessons from the Paris Commune

A conflict started by the ruling classes of Europe’s imperialist nations for the right to expand or maintain their empires in the Balkans, the Middle East, India, Africa and Asia, the Great War (1914-1918) was overwhelmingly fought by the working classes of those nations, who — even if they saw through the nationalist rhetoric of … Continue reading Two or Three Things to Remember on this Day of Remembrance

‘The city as a form of settlement did not arise by chance. The city is the richest economic and cultural form of community settlement, proven by centuries of experience. In its structural and architectural design the city is an expression of the political life and the national consciousness of the people.’  – Government of the … Continue reading Dresden Diary: Architecture, History and Politics

This summer I stayed on Dartmoor for a fortnight, and while there I visited the small village of Lydford. Walking from one end to the other in a few minutes, I found it hard to believe that a thousand years ago this was one of the four administrative centres for what is now Devon - … Continue reading The Way of the Dead: Land, Class and Architecture