The Chatham House meeting discusses South Korea’s foreign policy under President Lee Jae-myung, emphasizing a pragmatic approach amid complex global dynamics. Key challenges include managing relationships with the U.S., China, and North Korea. The panel examines how the Lee administration navigates geopolitical tensions and seeks to maintain strong international alliances while adapting to rapid changes.
PHOTO: The new Syrian Government Today’s Chatham House meeting is chaired by Raya Jalabi, Middle East Correspondent, Financial Times. On the panel are: Dr Haid Haid, MENA Programme, Rime Allaf, Syrian writer, formerly Chatham House and Dr Ibrahim Al-Assil, Belfer Center, Harvard University. It is a year since the rapid…
View More Chatham House: One year of Syria’s transition: Progress, challenges and prospects
The author reflects on discovering British singer Olivia Dean, noting her impressive 44 million Spotify listeners and the quality of her song “So Easy (To Fall In Love).” This experience challenges the author’s previous perception of British music, highlighting Dean’s contribution to the global music scene amidst a focus on American pop.
View More Olivia Dean – So Easy (To Fall In Love)
When Taylor Swift was due to come to the U.K. on her #ErasTour last year, as ever, I was tweeting my love to her like crazy lol. #AI was getting a lot of buzz at the time and I thoought I’d put ChatGPT to the test with a bit of…
View More Wez G inviting Taylor Swift to Tintern Abbey, using Wordsworth’s seductive poetic influence…
I had previously read Alison Weir’s most excellent book specifically on Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine many years ago so the author was familiar to me. I chanced upon this title in my local library (Caldicot) and thought I’d give it a go. It covers the lives of several British Queens,…
View More Review: Queens of the Crusades – by Alison Weir
On May 28th 2023, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was giving a victory speech to the excited Turkish masses, who had democratically elected him to a third term as President of Turkey. He achieved 52.2% of the vote in the second round of elections compared with the 47.8% of the challenger, Kemal…
View More Erdoğan’s Third Term as President of Turkey and What It Means
This is just another one of the many books I’ve read on the security services / spies / intelligence agencies in general. I guess I have a morbid fascination. Non-fiction throws up some pretty weird stuff – Life itself is a lot stranger than fiction. This tale from a turncoat…
View More Review: Defending The Realm – MI5 and The Shayler Affair – by Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding
I think everyone that has ever heard of Boris Johnson associates him with lies. Oborne, who is an established veteran political journalist, in this relatively brief text, exposes the extent of the former Conservative Prime Minister’s almost total aversion to the truth. He reckons Johnson has told over thousands of…
View More Review: The Assault On Truth – Boris Johnson and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism – by Peter Oborne
Jim ‘Shaft’ Ryan is a famous house music DJ from Birmingham who along with his brothers, Mick and Dermot, and their mate Lee, responsible for the seminary U.K. and global nightclub brands, Miss Moneypennys and Chuff Chuff. Jim is also my mate. I knew that Jim had trained as a…
View More Review: We May Win We May Lose – by Jim ‘Shaft’ Ryan
Thomas Paine is an important writer at an important time that bequeaths us in his ‘Rights of Man’ a fundamental shakeup of what our democratic rights as citizens should be, drawing especially on the French Revolution and also American Revolution and the fundamental rights that their new revolutionary societies produced…
View More Review: Rights of Man – by Thomas Paine
This book is quite old, first published in 1951, it dates from a period when the totalitarian reality of Hitler and Stalin were very much fresh in the mind. Hannah Arendt was a German Jew and this work is both philosophical, enlightening and gives a valuable educated insight into the…
View More Review: The Origins of Totalitariansm – by Hannah Arendt
In “Forty Nights,” Chris shares his journey through addiction and struggles on the margins of society, contrasting the glamorous perceptions of drug culture. The book paints a raw picture of his life in Devon, exploring themes of mental health and societal oppression. Despite challenges, it offers a hopeful narrative of recovery and transformation.
View More Review: Forty Nights – by Chris Thrall
Graham Greene delivers here a classic espionage novel, fiction, set in Cuba around the time of the revolution, Greene writes in his knowledgeable subject area of expertise a comedy account of a chance vacuum salesman being recruited by Mi6 as their ‘Man in Havana.’ Struggling lone parent Wormold runs a…
View More Review: Our Man in Havana – by Graham Greene
I love Apocalypse Now. It is one of my most favourite films. I learnt that apparently, Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ is the literary work that provides the basic narrative of the film. Apocalypse Now, however is set in war torn Vietnam, with the US Military hunting down an insane,…
View More Review: Heart of Darkness – by Joseph Conrad
‘Kim’ is recognised as the greatest work of famous author Rudyard Kipling. This is a cult novel especially in espionage circles. It is fiction but documents the widely popular Great Game between the British Empire and Tsarist Russia, a clandestine cat and mouse conflict between the two powers fought out…
View More Review: Kim – by Rudyard Kipling