-
Dec 23, 2024 | 
unherd.com | Samuel Rubinstein
On 4 October 1903, a 23-year-old man went to the house where Beethoven had died in Vienna and shot himself. Otto Weininger felt himself to be a great genius; he hoped in his final moments to absorb some of Beethovenâs lustre. It worked. The obscure book he left behind, Sex and Character, rapidly gained the recognition its author craved. Weiningerâs theatrical suicide inspired copycats and attracted admirers.
-
Dec 9, 2024 | 
thecritic.co.uk | Samuel Rubinstein
This article is taken from the December-January 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. The 1650s are back. Against the backdrop of our new Carolean age, a flurry of books has appeared to illuminate our nation’s brief flirtation with republican government.
-
Nov 24, 2024 | 
spectator.co.uk | Samuel Rubinstein
Something is stirring. In WhatsApp groups and Westminster pubs, wherever wonks, spads, and other SW1 types gather, there’s a name on everybody’s lips. It’s like John Galt in Atlas Shrugged or Tyler Durden in Fight Club. It’s at once a wail of despair and a call to arms. Who is this man they whisper of? Who is “Nicolas (30 ans)”? “Nicolas (30 ans)” is the protagonist of “Le contrat social”, a meme posted onto Twitter, as it then was, in April 2020.
-
Nov 18, 2024 | 
unherd.com | Samuel Rubinstein
Culture WarsdiverseJordan Petersonself-helpSociety Like every conservative intellectual, Jordan Peterson once was a man of the Left. Left-wingers were hard to come by in Seventies Alberta; Peterson grew up in what was in effect a one-party state.
-
Sep 16, 2024 | 
unherd.com | Samuel Rubinstein
British EmpireCultureHistoryIndianoneWilliam Dalrymple There was a time, still hovering on the limits of living memory, when Britain specialised in the manufacture of William Dalrymples.
-
Aug 22, 2024 | 
thecritic.co.uk | Samuel Rubinstein
This article is taken from the August-September 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. When General Gordon went to Jerusalem in 1883, the city offended his evangelical sensibilities. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, filled with incense and superstition, simply would not do: Christ must have died elsewhere.
-
Aug 8, 2024 | 
unherd.com | Samuel Rubinstein
Ancient RomeByzantine EmpireEuropeHistorySociety The year 1776 was an eventful one.
-
May 15, 2024 | 
unherd.com | Samuel Rubinstein
Academiaculture warHistoryNazi GermanyNazismnoneSocietyUniversities On both sides of America’s Palestine campus wars, you find people making historical parallels. The protestors present themselves as the heirs to the Vietnam peaceniks, proudly bearing what Noam Chomsky called “the responsibility of intellectuals” and comparing their own run-ins with the police to the Kent State massacre. Their opponents take a different view.
-
May 9, 2024 | 
thecritic.co.uk | Samuel Rubinstein
The rebranding of Anglo-Saxon England is senseless and silly My first (and, to date, only) academic publication focused on a Biblical commentary by the tenth-century monk Ælfric of Eynsham, a man whom, at least until recently, everyone would have described as an “Anglo-Saxon” without a second thought. Unsurprisingly, then, “Anglo-Saxon” crops up in that essay rather often. One of the journal’s reviewers was moved by this to offer me a note of caution.
-
Mar 25, 2024 | 
spectator.co.uk | Samuel Rubinstein
Text size Line Spacing Comments Share Share Samuel Rubinstein The real problem with Jonathan Glazer Linkedin Messenger Email Every year the Oscars unleashes some kind of political controversy, and this year’s revolves around Jonathan Glazer’s speech denouncing Israel. Glazer, the director of the acclaimed Holocaust film The Zone of Interest, used his moment in the spotlight to rail against ‘the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people’....
