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Edward Said Memorial Concert As a tribute to the life and work of Edward Said, the London Review of Books has invited the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under their conductor Daniel Barenboim to give a concert at the Barbican Hall in London on August 4th. The Orchestra was set up by Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim with the aim of giving young Arabs and Israelis the chance to work and perform together and to learn from some of the world’s best orchestral musicians. Their concert in London will be the high point of their summer tour this year. For more information and to book tickets, click here
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From the current issue

Vol. 26 No. 12 :: 24 June 2004

In the Waiting-Room of History
Amit Chaudhuri: 'First in Europe, then elsewhere'

Provincialising Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference by Dipesh Chakrabarty

"For modernity has already had its authentic incarnation in Europe: how then can it happen again, elsewhere? The non-West - the waiting-room - is therefore doomed either never to be quite modern, to be, in Naipaul's phrase, 'half-made'; or to possess only a semblance of modernity. This is a view of history and modernity that has, according to Chakrabarty, at once liberated, defined and shackled us in its discriminatory universalism; it is a view powerfully theological in its determinism, except that the angels, the blessed and the excluded are real people . . ." [ read more . . . ]

A Broad Grin and a Handstand
E.S. Turner on 'the fastest woman in the world' and the wild early years of motor-racing

The Bugatti Queen: In Search of a Motor-Racing Legend by Miranda Seymour

"With improved design was rekindled the passion for speed; road racing might be illegal but the solo 'speed merchants' were getting away with it. That early Lanchester which 'sang like a six-inch shell across the Sussex Downs' contained (in the back seat) Rudyard Kipling, a bit of a road-hog who had the nerve to proclaim that the car had at last brought a major blood sport to Britain .".". speed worship began to infect hard-headed urban councils, as one town after another began holding Grand Prix round-the-houses races, or even round-the-houses-and-into-the-trees races." [ read more . . . ]

Those Streets Over There
John Connelly on the Warsaw Rising

Rising '44: 'The Battle for Warsaw' by Norman Davies

"Rather than uncover history, survivors shield memory. They do so with the unique self-righteousness of those who have emerged safely from the rubble, leaving comrades behind. Like the now dwindling generation of AK fighters, Davies is incapable of imagining their sacrifice to have been in vain. Their self-righteousness has become his; their rejection of persistent questions about Polish anti-semitism explains his impatient refusal to look squarely at the 'black pages' of Polish history." [ read more . . . ]

Plus

Short Cuts
Thomas Jones isn't impressed by good booking men

At Tate Modern
Peter Campbell: good plain painting and men in shirt-sleeves

Letters from  Richard Clogg,  Patrick Renshaw,  David Simpson,  Ian Hennessey,  Peregrine Worsthorne,  Julian Rathbone,  Brian Concannon,  Andrew McNeillie,  Ralph Seliger,  Martin Pierce,  Geoffrey Thompson,  Michael Wright

Table of Contents