Julian Girdham

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Radical Attention

December 17, 2020 by Julian Girdham in Attention, Books, Non-Fiction

Julia Bell’s pocket-sized essay, Radical Attention examines the ways our attention has become a commodity and how an industry has developed out of our distractions.

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December 17, 2020 /Julian Girdham
Attention, Books, Non-Fiction
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A Ghost in the Throat

November 10, 2020 by Julian Girdham in Books, Poetry, Non-Fiction

Doireann Ní Ghríofa's remarkable first prose work, as befits a poet, is itself a weaving, as it braids to and fro in its consideration of female bodies, erasures and absences, texts and textures, rooms, ghosts.

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November 10, 2020 /Julian Girdham
Books, Poetry, Non-Fiction
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The Five

July 07, 2020 by Julian Girdham in Books, Non-Fiction

In Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Linda (Willy Loman’s widow) says, ‘Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person’, and this is what Hallie Rubenhold is doing in The Five. She rescues the murder victims from history, from their erasure by stereotype, laziness and misogyny, and makes them real again.

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July 07, 2020 /Julian Girdham
Books, Non-Fiction
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The Years

June 23, 2020 by Julian Girdham in Books, Non-Fiction

‘Family narrative and social narrative are one and the same’. This is a great narrative about family, first as a child and moving through the teenage years to marriage, motherhood and eventually being a grandmother. It is also about France itself, culture, technology, consumerism and so much more.

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June 23, 2020 /Julian Girdham
Books, Non-Fiction
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The Ministry of Truth

May 27, 2020 by Julian Girdham in English Teaching, Books, Non-Fiction

Dorian Lynskey’s The Ministry of Truth: a biography of George Orwell’s 1984 is a superb introduction to the novel, and a vital read for English teachers.

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May 27, 2020 /Julian Girdham
English Teaching, Books, Non-Fiction
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