Author: Retrospect Journal
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‘Frankenstein’: A Celebration of 200 Years of Thrilling Horror
Written by Daniel Sharp On 1 January 1818, the first edition of Mary Shelley’s horror novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus was published. The two hundredth anniversary of its publication is coming up very soon, and in celebration of this, the Keats-Shelley Association of America has launched the ‘Frankenreads’ project. This project encourages people to…
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Trump, Brexit and the return of the ‘Country Party’
Written by Travis Aaroe What forces drove Britain to vote to leave the European Union, and for American voters to elect the political outsider Donald Trump? The rhetoric used by both campaigns strongly echoes that of an earlier political tradition, known as the ‘Country Party’ or the ‘Country Persuasion’. The Country Party began in…
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Three Hours in Hell
Written by Lewis Twiby Guernica, April 25, 1937 “Franco is about to deliver a mighty blow against which all resis…” Testily, Luisa shut off the radio. The rebels had been blasting out their asinine propaganda for the last few hours. It had been affecting some. Over half of her battalion had been destroyed during their…
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Public Lecture Review: Dr. Shashi Tharoor’s ‘Looking Back at the British Raj in India’
Written by Carissa Chew On Monday 2 October 2017, as part of the University of Edinburgh’s World India Day celebrations, acclaimed author, Member of the Indian Parliament and former UN Under-Secretary-General, Dr. Shashi Tharoor, delivered a forceful and poignant speech at McEwan Hall in which he made plain the exploitative, oppressive and violent nature of…
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Napoleonic Prisoners and Edinburgh Castle: A Brief Examination
Written by Daniel Sharp Edinburgh Castle stands on high, overlooking Scotland’s capital. It is an impressive sight – it may be small, yet it is also beautiful, especially when lit up at night, and provides a scene that many photographers love to snap. It is a famous tourist spot, its deep history drawing in visitors…
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Second Hand Time
Written by Eleanor Hemming Often when we recount the eras of Russian history, we think first of the Tsarist era, followed by the Soviet Union, and then the arrival of Putin’s Russia. Little thought is given to what happened in between the collapse of the USSR and the year 2000: the all-important tumult of the…
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Lecture Review: Dr. Lorena De Vita on ‘Democracy, Relativism and Pragmatism: The 1952 Agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and Israel’.
Written by Eleanor Hemming This semester, the Centre for the Study of Modern and Contemporary History are putting on a series of fascinating and relevant seminars, where leading scholars from all over the UK and Europe come to Edinburgh to talk about their research. This week, the visiting speaker was Dr. Lorena De Vita, a…
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Classical influences on Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
Written by Bella Howard-Vyse To say that the Classical influences on the Modern World are both underestimated and underappreciated would be an understatement. Despite the fact that 60 per cent of words in the English language derive from Latin, there are other less obvious connections between the two vastly different worlds: the Ancient and the Modern.…
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