Bradley Strotten

2 months ago | unherd.com | Bradley Strotten

DispatchDogsFight dogsRural EnglandSocietyUKXl BullyXL Bully ban ‚ÄúVast!‚ÄĚ Jason shouted, which means fix in place, ‚ÄúVast!‚ÄĚ. And a muscled black-and-tan Malinois with titanium-coated k9s locked on to my left arm. It was an otherwise quiet afternoon in Kentish suburbia. In a woods tucked away from the Barratt Homes and play park, I stood in a bite suit, pressed against a tree, as my old friend Jason shouted instructions at Trigger ‚ÄĒ his ‚Äúak47 on a leash‚ÄĚ.

Feb 25, 2025 | quillette.com | Brad Strotten |John Lloyd |Ronald Dworkin |Gerfried Ambrosch |Bradley Strotten

A review of We Do Not Part by Han Kang, 272 pages, Hogarth (February 2025)“Here they come,” wrote Kingsley Amis of Colin Wilson’s debut book, the bold existentialist anthology, The Outsiders, “tramp, tramp, tramp—all those characters you thought were discredited, or had never read, or (if you are like me) had never heard of: Barbusse, Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Hermann Hesse, Hemingway, Van Gogh, Nijinsky, Tolstoy [and] Dostoevsky.”This was textbook Amis.

Feb 12, 2025 | spiked-online.com | Bradley Strotten |Tom Slater

Story of Us is a futile attempt to unite the nation under the banner of BBC-approved orthodoxies. Share Topics Culture UK Want to read spiked ad-free? Become a spiked supporter. When a BBC documentary about Britain’s postwar history is given a title as immodest as Story of Us, it invites two obvious questions. Who is it that’s telling our story? And who the hell are ‘we’, anyway?

Oct 25, 2024 | quillette.com | Brad Strotten |Theodore Hill |Allan Stratton |Helen Dale |Bradley Strotten

A review of I Will Live by Lale Gül; 320 pages; Virago (August 2024)Lale Gül’s autobiographical debut novel Ik ga leven (“I Will Live”) was first published in Dutch in 2021 when the author was just 23. It became an immediate bestseller and was published in English translation last month. The story follows the dramatic unveiling of Gül’s fictional counterpart, Büsra, a twenty-year-old Muslim rebel living in the Netherlands and chafing against religious and cultural authority.

Aug 18, 2024 | quillette.com | Brad Strotten |Thomas Larson |Lawrence Krauss |George Perry |Bradley Strotten

A review of Ghost Chilli by Nikkitha Bakshani, 288 pages, Fleet (July 2024)In Ghost Chilli, the debut novel by London-based American writer Nikkitha Bakshani, progressive systems of belief compete for primacy in the disorganised personality of protagonist Muskan, an anxious psychobabbler and hyper-race-conscious Indian expat working for foodie magazines in New York.