Tuesday 10 February 2026 to Tuesday 17 February 2026

[mousetrappling]

Books

• “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World” William Dalrymple
  Introduction sets out that the book will look at three aspects of Indian culture spreading in turn, Buddhism across China & further east, Hinduism across Southeast Asia and mathematics into Arabia & further west. So the first part of the book opens with the early history of Buddhism.

Podcasts

• The Rest is Politics US
  Bad Bunny playing at the Super Bowl, the effects of Trump’s corruption on national security. More on the Epstein files, including discussion of Lutnick who’s been caught blatantly lying about cutting off all contact with Epstein.
• The Bunker
  Is there any truth to the idea that the UK is heading for imminent civil war (no.). Weekly Wrap Up.
• Literature & History
  The Umayyad Caliphate, which begins with the events that lead to the permanent Shia/Sunni split and ends at the transition to what we now call the Islamic Golden Age.
• Oh God What Now
  Guest episode with Ian Hughes, who has written a book about how dangerous personalities are destroying democracy (tho despite that being his book’s subtitle I thought his thesis was more that people like Trump were a symptom of how our democracy’s guardrails have eroded and then they of course accelerate it). Normal panel episode, Keir Starmer and is he safe, plus the story of the second referendum campaign as their guest has written a book about it.
• The History of Philosophy in China
  The stories about skills & ordinary people doing skilled work in the Zhuangzi. And the idea that mastery comes through direct experience and can’t be taught, and that it is a matter of the dao not of skill.
• The Rest is Politics
  Avoiding Labour & Trump, so a bit about Japan, a bit about Bad Bunny (so not a great job of avoiding discussing Trump), planting trees (Rory’s obsession).
• The History of China
  The Opium War is still not quite started – this episode was about Lord Napier coming to China and bullheadedly saber rattling until he had to slink away with his tail between his legs (and shortly after died of disease so faced no consequences). Both sides take the wrong lesson: that they should do just what they did this time but harder.
• Journey Through Time
  The fifth episode of their series on the Spanish Civil War which takes us from Guernica through to the end. Characterised by Hitler trying out new tactics to use later in other wars, and the Republican forces wasting men & effort by using WW1 tactics to gain flashy victories of no strategic importance that looked good to Moscow.
• The Rest is Politics Leading
  First half of an interview with Neil Kinnock.

TV

• Spurs v. Newcastle (1-2)
• The Age of Uncertainty
  This episode was about poverty, and his thesis is that it is fundamentally down to land, and ownership thereof.
• Digging for Britain
  The south of England (sort of), including amongst other things an excavation at Trinity College Oxford, ship building in the time of Nelson in the New Forest, and some practical archaeology recreating a bone flute.
• Empire with David Olusoga
  Slavery was one of the threads running through this episode – the transport of Africans to slavery in the Americas by the British, the freeing of & evacuation of “loyalist” black people who fought for the British during the American War of Independence, the replacement of slaves by “indentured” Indian workers once slavery was banned. Another thread was the treatment of the poor & the indigenous people during the colonisation of Australia – those that got shipped out as prisoners, and the awfulness of how the Tasmanian people were treated (which was the example he chose rather than the only example).
• Aston Villa v. Newcastle (1-3), FA Cup 4th round

Exhibitions

• Hawai’i: A Kingdom Crossing the Oceans
  At the British Museum. The history of around a century between the unification of Hawai’i at the end of the 18th Century and the takeover by the US around the end of the 19th Century (plus a bit of modern looking back at what’s been lost). An interestingly different story of interactions between Britain & another culture – the Hawai’ians ended up as allies of the British, with their sovereignty respected. One of the key events the exhibition focused on was a trip by the Hawai’ian king & queen to visit George IV, on which the royal couple sadly died of measles.
• Nordic Noir: Works on Paper from Edvard Munch to Mamma Anderssen
  At the British Museum. A fairly large collection of prints from the 19th Century through to now, by Scandinavian artists including some who are members of the indigenous Sami people. A bit hit & miss for me, and although they were grouped into sorts it felt rather incoherent.
• Samurai
  At the British Museum. Really liked this exhibition, it covered the history of the Samurai in Japan from the 12th Century through to the abolishment of the class towards the end of the 19th Century, plus modern retrospectives & mythologising. Three main sections to it, first the origins of the Samurai class as warriors during an unsettled period of Japanese history, then the evolution of this class into the bureaucracy that ran the unified and peaceful country under the 250 years of the Tokugawa Shogunate, and lastly the many ways the Samurai are represented today (including Darth Vader). Lots of elaborate suits of armour but all functional (after all no-one knew the peace would last so even if you only needed it for ceremonies now it was best to be prepared).
• Sufi Life & Art
  At the British Museum. A small selection of objects picked out to give an overview of Sufis and how they fit into Islamic culture. I found a set of three modern paintings of Sufi dancers the most striking part of the exhibition.

Music

• Various “Now 12”
• Pure Reason Revolution live at the Islington Assembly Hall
  As always PRR rocked, one of my favourite live bands and we managed (due to Paul & Avi getting in the queue earlier than us) to get right near the front. This tour is celebrating the 20th anniversary of their first album, The Dark Third, so they had their original female vocalist and original drummer back to join the line up for the tour. No support act, and they played two distinct sets. The first was the whole of The Dark Third in order, and the second set covered all the other albums with at least one track of each of the five. And we got two of my favourite songs when they play them live – Deus Ex Machina & Fight Fire. So I was a particularly happy Margaret.