Richard Lea

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Richard Lea

Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the pivotal figures who ignited a global boom in Latin American literature, has died aged 89. His death on Sunday was announced in a statement from his children, Álvaro, Gonzalo and Morgana Vargas Llosa. Over a career that spanned more than 50 years, Vargas Llosa charted power and corruption in a series of novels including The Time of the Hero, Conversation in the Cathedral and The Feast of the Goat.

Jan 8, 2025 | the-tls.co.uk | Heather White |Susie Mesure |Mia Levitin |Richard Lea

Lynne Tillman’s American Genius, a Comedy follows a woman over the course of a day during her stay in an artist’s retreat. The woman doesn’t use the term “artist’s retreat”, but she does call the people who are there with her “residents” or “fellows”. Each of them arrives and leaves at personally determined intervals; each issues elaborate dietary instructions to the beleaguered kitchen staff; and each, it transpires over time, practises a different arcane art.

Dec 11, 2024 | the-tls.co.uk | Matthew Stanley |Hunter Dukes |Frances Wood |Richard Lea

The ideas of the German-Jewish mathematician Emmy Noether (not least the four-part theorem that bears her name) laid the foundation for much of modern physics, yet it is the case that students today can complete their degrees without having heard of her. Einstein’s Tutor by Lee Phillips seeks both to remedy this problem and understand how it came to be. Noether was born in Erlangen, Bavaria, in 1882, the daughter of the mathematician Max Noether.

Dec 11, 2024 | the-tls.co.uk | Frances Wood |Matthew Stanley |Hunter Dukes |Richard Lea

The Ming doctor Li Shizhen’s pharmacopoeia is widely known in China, and the man himself has appeared on postage stamps and in a popular film of 1956, in which he is depicted clambering over mountains in search of medicinal herbs. The Ben cao gang mu was first printed in the year of his death, 1593, but is still recognized as the main historical source of reference for Chinese materia medica – contemporary researchers plough through it looking for new cures from ancient recipes.

Oct 30, 2024 | the-tls.co.uk | Richard Lea |Kathryn Harkup |Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow |Anthony Grafton

It is hard to admit when we don’t know something. We often prefer to flannel or fabricate than to say we don’t have the answer. According to the philosopher Andy Clark, this tendency to invent runs deep. We perceive the world by constructing mental models and seeing where those models don’t apply – an account of perception that suggests illusions are simply ordinary cognitive processing confronted with extraordinary situations.