Introduction February 2014. Just as Russia was invading and annexing Crimea, the world was watching another case of Putin showing off, also in the Black Sea region: the Winter Olympics in Sochi. So far the most expensive Games on the record, they were meant to demonstrate Russia’s opulence and grandeur, and, of course, to highlight…
Category: History
Lord of the Ocean – Aneeta Sundararaj
“China is going to take over our world,” my friend declared. Unlikely to happen! I didn’t say the words aloud, though, for this man’s convictions were delivered with such ferocity that any meaningful debate was impossible. Rumour had it that he believed that every country was doomed to inevitable failure unless it bowed down to…
Beowulf: You Know More Than You Think! – Danny Bate
As a living soul of the twenty-first century, if you take a glance at the opening lines of Beowulf, the Old English poem, the chances are that you won’t be able to understand it. If anything, you may perhaps recognise its famous first word, hƿæt. This is absolutely fine, I should add; Old English is an old…
Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner that Held Them: Managing Isolation and Becoming the Fabric of a Place – Joanna Mason
January and the New Year are often dreaded in their insistence that we look back on what we have achieved, or what we meant to. This year, the looming of March feels the same, with its marking of the anniversary of the initial lockdown. It is easy to be hard on the progress you have…
ONE POEM – Rose Foran
I saw them. In the mind’s eye.
A vision once obscured, then clarified.
One Book: What Would You Save From Being Destroyed for Ever? – Hunter Liguore
If all the books in the world were being burned in a fire and you had the chance to save just one, what book would you save? For some this might be an easy answer; for others, this question might need the utmost consideration—as an avid book reader, with piles of books lining all corners…
The Red Daisies of Prague Spring – Garrett Zecker
An exploration of feminist indulgence, excess, and gratification via the colour red in Věra Chytilová’s Czech New Wave masterpiece Daisies (1966).
COMFORT FOODS // Dissecting the Heart of Mandu – J.A. Pak
Dissecting the Heart of Mandu The Chinese, Mongolians, Japanese, and now the Americans and Europeans are in my food, but are the Turkic nomads there as well? Intriguing and exciting. A mandu (만두) is a Korean dumpling. A savory dumpling with a filling of meat. It’s usually boiled but it can also be steamed, pan-fried,…
The Equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius: A Hero over the Regal Complacency – Freya Zhang
Freya Zhang is a young critic from Shanghai. She is currently based in London, pursuing an MA in Comparative Literature in King’s College London. After being awarded a scholarship under the State Scholarship Fund organized by China Scholarship Council in 2017, she pursued her further study in University College Cork for a semester, where she…
Frederic Manning and the Greatest War Novel of all Time – Malcolm St Hill
Image: A Star Shell – Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson, 1916 Malcolm St Hill lives in Newcastle, Australia and is a poet, reviewer and independent researcher focused on the literary memory of the Great War, particularly the work of Australian soldier-poets. Frederic Manning and the Greatest War Novel of all Time The Australian poet and…
Horsing Around: Performative Media and Yuan Art – Chris Rouse
Chris Rouse is Porridge‘s Non-Fiction Editor. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham, researching representations of East Asia in medieval European maps and travel literature. He has a keen interest in interdisciplinarity, global history and the history of ideas and ideologies. In his spare time he can often be found in old churches making bad…
ILLUSTRATIONS – Ian Cooke-Tapia
Ian Cooke-Tapia is a Panama-born multidisciplinary storyteller, illustrator, and entrepreneur. His practice focuses on intradisciplinary subject matter as means to explore the fluidity of the rules of our reality, and ignored social narratives. See more of his work here. and find him on twitter and Instagram. An Incomplete Timeline of Isthmian Identit(y/ies) Whichever narrative is…
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