Showing 1 - 3 of 3
Ambassador, provocateur, outcast
Life, Published on 25/08/2017
» Prince Prisdang was a complex person to say the least. A family member of King Chulalongkorn and Siam's first ambassador to Europe in the late 19th century, "his life", as one of the world's pre-eminent scholars of Thai history Tamara Loos writes, "buzzes like a hub of frenetic political activity, linking together the spokes of Thai nationalism, European imperialism, Buddhist universalism, and transnational anti-imperialism".
Vatican thriller
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 25/08/2017
» Christianity hasn't been around long, its two millennia shorter than Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism. The God-Mary match captured the public's imagination and Holy Mother Church has been matched with God ever since. It survived its encounters with the Saracens and the Reformation, and now has an estimated following of 1 billion.
Gothic gloom in an oestrogenic Eden
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/08/2017
» With morbid delight and cool lyricism, Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled tells the story of a Union soldier who finds shelter in an all-girl school during the American Civil War. The soldier, played by Colin Farrell, goes from scared to cocky to bewildered, a handsome lump of masculinity amid the virginal corsets of the good Catholic girls. The women -- Nicole Kidman as the headmistress, Kirsten Dunst as the French teacher, Elle Fanning as one of the students -- go from giggly to paranoid to practical, a chaste, confused, all-white colony of calm amid the smoking gunfire of war.