culture

SEDUCED BY BERLIN

Simon Willis — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:17:52 +0000

Robert Walser's "Berlin Stories", translated into English for the first time, have humble subjects and fabulous images, writes Simon Willis ... read more »

HOW TO WRITE LIKE SHAKESPEARE

Robert Butler — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:18:26 +0000

In the ninth in our series Notes on a Voice, Robert Butler takes on the world's most famous dramatist ... read more »

THE PLAYLIST: 1972

Tim de Lisle — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:35:01 +0000

As a gem of a year for music reaches its ruby anniversary, Tim de Lisle digs out some old LPs ... read more »

IT'S THE CULTURE, STUPID

Robert Butler — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:15:49 +0000

~ Posted by Robert Butler, December 30th 2011

In 1992, Bill Clinton beat George Bush to the presidency with the slogan "It's the economy, stupid". Twenty years later, this phrase looks even more of a simplification than when it first surfaced. The current financial crisis has shown us the economy is part of something much wider: it's the culture, stupid.

Readers of Michael Lewis's new book "Boomerang" have been taken on a hair-raising tour of Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland and America during the financial crisis. "Boomerang" shows how the economies are very different because the countries themselves—and their attitudes towards finance—are very different.

But this is a crisis for financial experts too. Gillian Tett, US managing editor at the Financial Times, told the BBC this week that for the last 20 or 30 years people had been trained to think that if they had a computer spread sheet and lots of numbers and equations they could not only predict the future but also control the economic environment.

The great wake-up call of the last year is that it's actually about the social and political fabric and the question of what's going to happen next to the Eurozone or the UK or the US really depends on politics and culture and the way that societies behave, and people just aren't trained to understand that or analyse it.

Tett, tipped as a future editor of the FT, may have a head start: she has a PhD in social anthropology.

Robert Butler is online editor of Intelligent Life

OUR BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2011

Maggie Fergusson — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:06:37 +0000

Maggie Fergusson chooses a mischievous novel by Alan Hollinghurst and a gripping murder investigation by Richard Lloyd Parry ... read more »

SIX GOOD BOOKS

Maggie Fergusson — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:05:24 +0000

Our literary editor Maggie Fergusson recommends Jeanette Winterson on her mother, Joan Didion on her daughter, and four others ... read more »

WHERE SIBELIUS FELL SILENT

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:00:24 +0000

Julian Barnes explores the house where Sibelius lived, died, wrote much of his music—and spent decades not writing, or not publishing ... read more »

EIGHT GOOD BOOKS

Maggie Fergusson — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:06:31 +0000

Maggie Fergusson enjoys a Booker-winner, a fine life of Dickens and a sharp twist on Homer ... read more »

AT THE CINEMA: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

Ian Jack — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:25:22 +0000

Lionel Shriver's novel has been turned into an immaculate film by Lynne Ramsay—at times too immaculate for Ian Jack ... read more »

NOTES ON A VOICE: ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Bee Wilson — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 10:06:51 +0000

In our seventh instalment of Notes on a Voice, Bee Wilson considers the inventor of Sherlock Holmes ... read more »