Frigiliana , Acebuchal the "Lost Village" and Wars

 Frigiliana and Acebuchal, The “Lost Village”

 

Frigiliana is a well-known pueblo blanco (“white village”, of Moorish origins) in the hills some six kilometres inland from Nerja on the coast. 

 

Justice in War: Michael Walzer

 Justice in War

 

 

Michael Walzer is the pre-eminent exponent of modern Just War theory. This is the philosophical tradition that debates the “justice” of going to war and the moral constraints that should be observed in the waging of it. 

 

Valley of the Kings; Abu Simbel

 The Valley of the Kings; Abu Simbel

 

The Valley is an impressive deep desert feature. It is marred by the modern infrastructure of a tarmac road, which takes tourist buggies from the lower-lying visitor centre to the edge of the site, at the Valley’s far end, where are concentrated the tombs.

A Visit to Egypt

 A Visit to Egypt

 

My first time in Egypt, indeed in Africa. First impressions arrived on the plane, coming into land at Cairo. There's a lot of desert, but the desert is dotted with strangely symmetrical new developments -apartment blocks and what look like (and probably are) military or police barracks.

The Changing of the Bones: Marina Abramovic

 The  Royal Academy show dedicated to the performance artist Marina Abramovic has attracted many prurient headlines, because of the live nude performances by the artist’s young surrogates, replicating original performances by Marina herself. She, being 77 years of age, has retired from that category of her work, more likely because of its physical intensity then for prudish reasons. 

Good at Hands: Hans Hals

 Good at Hands: Frans Hals

 

The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals (1582-1666) is a paradigm of the immediately approachable in classical painting: the Mona Lisa of the unsubtle chuckle.

The Hals exhibition at the National Gallery confirms his talent for smiling faces. They are everywhere: exuberant, tender, confident, self-satisfied. 

John Gray on Liberalism

 John Gray on Liberalism

 

 

John Gray demolishes the myths and self-deceptions of liberals with gleeful rhetorical flourishes. History-as-progress is bunk. Especially, the Enlightenment project of universal liberalism as the endpoint of historical progress is shot, finished, dustbinned by the intractable vagaries and contradictions of human nature and societies.