people

From individual experience to emergent identities, we measure the pulse of life and change, from the ground up. This theme is a place for memorable, exemplary, innovative and intriguing individuals.

Tuesday 20th December

A tableau for Václav Havel

Tjebbe van Tijen, 20 December 2011

Vaclav Havel

Tjebbe van Tijen presents a montage of graffiti and photographs in honour of Václav Havel

Monday 4th July

Ronald Reagan and America: the real legacy

Godfrey Hodgson, 4 July 2011

The posthumous inflation of Ronald Reagan’s political achievement is also a covert critique of George W. Bush’s foreign-policy failures. But there are also deep continuities between the two administrations, says Godfrey Hodgson. Plus: Takashi Inoguchi on the US and Japan (archive)

Tuesday 24th May

Bob Dylan at 70: revolution in the head, revisited

David Hayes, 24 May 2011

The most influential and original musician of the 1960s generation remains a figure of protean creativity half a century on. The wealth of attention devoted to Bob Dylan as he reaches his 70th birthday is testament to a career of astonishing range. It also reflects the complex legacy of a formative decade which Dylan’s songs and persona helped to define, says David Hayes.

Monday 23rd May

Bob Dylan: a conversation

David Hayes, 23 May 2011

The celebrations of the 70th birthday of the great American musician Bob Dylan include many personal journeys through the archives of memory. Here, David Hayes recalls a thrilling series of concerts Dylan performed in 1981...and a late-night encounter.

Monday 15th November

People power and the new global ferment

Stellan Vinthagen, 15 November 2010

People power does not lend itself to the geo-strategic interests of empires or warlords, since it is based on collective action and civic unity, as well as the refusal to comply with existing power-holders. Any movement that opts for civil resistance has to encompass and attempt to represent diverse social groups.

Friday 18th June

Charles de Gaulle remembered

Neal Ascherson, 18 June 2010

A London radio broadcast on 18 June 1940 by an unknown French officer altered history’s course. It was also the first act in Charles de Gaulle’s extraordinary thirty-year role as national-political leader and embodiment of “a certain idea of France”. Neal Ascherson traverses a landscape of memory - from Greenock to Paris, Algiers to Warsaw - to recall his encounters with a colossus of French and European history.

Friday 16th April

Cambodia: surviving the Khmer Rouge

Var Hong Ashe, 16 April 2010

On 17 April 1975, the Khmer Rouge began a terrible political experiment in Cambodia. It was to last for four years. Var Hong Ashe tells the epic story of how she survived it

Thursday 1st October