As soon as I picked up the parcel, my heart sank. The sheer weight of it gave the game away. Already I could unhappily picture myself struggling to hold it in one hand without straining a wrist while standing on the Piccadilly Line.
I’d ordered it after coming across a couple of positive references to it in quick succession: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. Written in the 1980s, set in the 1870s, it’s a cowboy story that won a Pulitzer in its day and still has its enthusiasts. I just hadn’t thought to check its length.
Because light-induced illusions can be created in controlled environments, they might help researchers to discover the origin of hallucinations. The fact that flickering lights on closed eyes causes visions of colours, shapes and movement is "one of the oldest findings in neuroscience", says Anil Seth, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Sussex, and the lead scientist on the immersive art-and-science project Dreamachine.
Created as a tool to capture the diversity of the public's inner minds by using strobing lights to induce hallucinations, the Dreamachine has been touring the UK during 2022. It is based on a little-known invention from 1959 by the same name. With the promise of being able to experience psychedelic hallucinations without drugs, I ventured in.
“What’s in her bag?” It’s a standard question posed in women’s magazines and on YouTube. The answers are meant to give readers an intimate glimpse into a chic individual’s world: what lip gloss she uses, what novel she’s reading. In her brilliantly berserk third novel, “Life Is Everywhere,” Lucy Ives utilizes this conceit to unique effect. If we imagine, that is, that the bag in question belonged to an obsessive, freshly jilted graduate student, “nearly insane with doubt,” awash in stoner wonderment and frustrated literary ambition.
Like any encounter with a fortuneteller, it's best to put your trust in Kalyna's hands and let her build a story around the two of you. Parts of it will speak to your own specific fears and desires; other aspects will be entertaining fictions, until you discover the devastating shard of truth within. And even if you know from the start that Kalyna is a swindler, she'll still surprise you (and even herself) by seeing something that no one else can.
Since his death in 1965, Winston Churchill has become a figure of such veneration, in Conservative circles, that it is sometimes difficult to see beyond this overwhelming aspect of his legacy. Adored by Margaret Thatcher, and still a regular point of reference for those nostalgic for Britain’s great days of Empire and of victory in Europe, his legacy increasingly attracts criticism and even hostility from those who reject that world view; and as Andrew Liddle points out in his fast-paced and fascinating new book about Churchill in Scotland, the growing polarisation of views about Churchill – not least around the debate on Scottish independence – tends to obscure and even misrepresent the memorable complexity and shifting allegiances of his early political life.
Another year of rain and terrible air, then I see the street again —