About Alice Nikki Vellios
Mom passed away in March 2005, in what seemed to me at the time to be a concatenation of events – three protracted deaths in one week: Mom, John Paul II, and Terri Schiavo. Perhaps it was a stimulus...
Λίγα λόγια για την Αλίκη Νίκη Βέλλιου
Η Μαμά πέθανε τον Μάρτιο του 2005, πράγμα που μου φάνηκε εκείνη την εποχή σαν μια αλληλουχία γεγονότων – σε μία εβδομάδα τρεις συνεχόμενοι θάνατοι: η Μαμά, ο Πάπας Ιωάννης Παύλος ο δεύτερος και η Terri Schiavo.
How to regain the habit of deep reading
We are shaped by a lifetime of books read for pleasure, so what happens if we become skimmers? 1 August 2022 – Most scare stories around the book industry make fabulous headlines, but are best read as fiction. The...
In praise of the “holiday read”
Summer books features have become a staple of publishing – though their origins lie far back in the 19th century 1 June 2022 – Most of my family’s summer vacations were on the sea in Cape Cod, Massachusetts –...
What industrial societies get wrong about childhood
The industrial world’s practice of placing children in classes of similar ages with an adult teacher is not the only way to learn – and it might not be the most effective. 1 February 2021 – Each year across the...
The Greeks and the Greek Revolution: an ancient debt
ABOVE: Raphael’s “School of Athens” (c1510) has Plato and his student, Aristotle, at its centre 5 April 2021 – “Hellas: A Lyrical Drama”, composed soon after the Greek war of independence broke out in 1821, is not generally considered one...
Athens: City of Wisdom — from ancient glories to euro crisis
ABOVE: A man takes in the view from the Acropolis in Athens, pictured in 1923 In a sweeping history covering thousands of years, Bruce Clark combines academic rigour with a personal passion for Greece 18 November 2021 – When...
Libraries, bitstreams and the threat to our repositories of knowledge
ABOVE: the landmark Tianjin Binhai New Area Library in Tianjin, northern China From printing press to internet, technology has driven the way we store the written word. But what are we at risk of losing? 12 December 2020 – Richard...
Oxford dictionary considers including wave of Trumpian neologisms
20 April 2017 – Mud-slinging by Donald Trump, as well as his supporters and critics, has not only affected political debate, it has created a vocabulary of insults that lexicographers are struggling to keep up with, as each...
Ebook sales continue to fall as younger generations drive appetite for print
17 March 2017 – Readers committed to physical books can give a sigh of relief, as new figures reveal that ebook sales are falling while sales of paper books are growing – and the shift is being driven by...
Most people don’t know they know most of the grammar they know
“That is the type of language up with which I shall not put” – Winston Churchill 26 October 2016 – Who can say what order should be used to list adjectives in English? Mark Forsyth, in “The Elements of...
Across human language, some basic vocabulary words sound the same
16 September 2016 – In a study that shatters a cornerstone concept in linguistics, an analysis of nearly two-thirds of the world’s languages shows that humans tend to use the same sounds for common objects and ideas, no...