July Round-up
What I’ve been writing about this month; plus, 25% off paid subscriptions for one year.
Hi all,
Firstly, I am offering 25% off of paid subscriptions for the first year (that’s £2.63 per month or £26.25 for a whole year, or the equivalent in other currencies). The offer runs until Sunday, 4 August.
If you appreciate my work and can afford to do so, please do consider taking up this offer. It is coming up to a year that I’ve been writing this newsletter, and it’s one of the most fun things I’ve done, but can only afford to continue doing so if paid subscription numbers increase.
Paid subscribers receive regular posts in the Rewound series, analysing objects or episodes from cultural and political history.
Rewound
For Rewound, I wrote this post on Reverend Wilbert V. Awdry’s first entry in The Railway Series, 1945’s The Three Railway Engines, and on what it meant for an Anglican curate and railway enthusiast to make engines alive.
One Take
For One Take, I reviewed The Bikeriders, and its intimate depiction of a 1960s Chicago motorcycle gang as an illicit form of associational culture, against the backdrop of a period of rapid social change.
I also reviewed Twisters, and its essentially optimistic vision of humanity’s battle with extreme weather events in an era of climate change, as well as its mistrust of business’s relationship with science.
My writing in other outlets
The Saturday Evening Post also published this article by me earlier this month on the relationship between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his American counterpart George H. W. Bush at the end of the Cold War, and their slightly competing visions of Europe’s future.
A half-century of a divided Cyprus
This month marked the 50th anniversary of the Athens-sponsored coup against Archbishop Makarios’s government in Cyprus and subsequent Turkish invasion of the island, paving the way for the island’s effective partition between its Greek and Turkish communities. In the space of a few weeks, thousands of Cypriots were killed, injured, or disappeared, while around a quarter of a million were displaced during or after the conflict. It was a tragic conclusion to two decades of intermittent inter- and intracommunal violence on the island.
Being of Cypriot descent myself, the story of the conflict was seared into my consciousness from an early age. The very first piece I wrote for this newsletter was on how the war of 1974 – in which my late father, then a teenager, as well as many of my other relatives, were forced to flee their homes as refugees – and the broader experience of Cyprus’s diaspora shaped me, and my approach as an historian.
The BBC World Service broadcast an excellent series of short episodes of its Witness History programme on Cyprus to mark the 50th anniversary of the coup and invasion. They are gathered together in this omnibus programme. I was especially moved by Bekir Azgun’s account of the moment of the coup as he and his father experienced it in the ethnically mixed village of Potamia.
It pains me deeply that my father did not get to see the ‘Cyprus Problem’ truly resolved within his lifetime. I hope, more than anything that all Cypriots will get to experience full and meaningful peace, justice, and reconciliation within mine.
That’s it for this round-up. Again, please do consider taking up the 25% discount on a year’s paid subscription to the newsletter.
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