Robert Greer
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Articles by Robert Greer
Artificial intelligence in medicine and the pursuit of environmentally responsible science
1 Zeng D Cao Z Neill DB Artificial intelligence–enabled public health surveillance—from local detection to global epidemic monitoring and control. in: Xing L Giger ML Min JK Artificial intelligence in medicine: technical basis and clinical applications. Elsevier, Cambridge: 437-453 The potential benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine are indisputable.
Opinion: When it comes to housing, Colorado has abandoned its progressive values. Let’s get them back.
As a proud progressive, I support multiculturalism, religious tolerance, the rights of minorities and the freedom of movement for all peoples. But I’ve been dispirited and disturbed to hear a growing sentiment: “We can’t accept more migrants. We can’t even take care of our own.” Sadly, I no longer hear this only from the nationalistic right. Indeed, this rhetoric is being fueled, in part, by policy choices that are most problematic in the bluest, most progressive places.
Get in the Sea
After hundreds of years of habitation, what causes a village, town or city to disappear? In the case of Capel Celyn in north Wales, it was water. In the late 1950s Liverpool was in need of a new reservoir to serve its growing population. In 1960 – bypassing the Welsh planning authorities – a bill was passed in Parliament to allow for the ‘development’ of the village. Residents were served with eviction notices, the land was levelled, houses knocked down, corpses removed from the graveyard.
Why betting early is critical to beating NFL markets
A generally accepted strategy in NFL betting is to place bets early in the week, and it's a fairly simple principle: As bettors make wagers, bookmakers adjust their lines, and those lines only become more accurate and thus harder to beat. This principle is backed up by data. From 2007 to 2020, closing spreads predicted the correct winner 65.9% of the time, while opening spreads predicted the correct winner just 63.5% of the time.
The Cheapest Bookstore in the World
Writing in his Memoirs of the First Forty-Five Years of the Life of James Lackington (published in 1792), Lackington, who began his working life as an illiterate shoemaker’s apprentice, explained why he had undertaken to transform the book industry: Thousands […] have been effectually prevented from purchasing (though anxious so to do) whose circumstances in life would not permit them to pay the full price, and thus were totally excluded from the advantage of improving their understandings,...
This I Believe New England - Truths About Racism
Published Tue Oct 06 2020 21:49:12 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) There is no denying that the subject of race is in the air. Black Lives Matter. Police-community relations. Racial tension. Race is now at the center of both public and private discourse. Robert Greer shares his poignant first-person reflections on the meaning of race in our lives. Robert Greer comes to us from Fall River Massachusetts. He works in New Bedford with children on the spectrum for autism.
My London - The London Magazine
Sally Emerson is the award-winning author of novels including ‘Heat’, ‘Separation’ and ‘Second Sight’ and an anthologist of poetry and prose. Her six novels are being published by Quartet this year. She lives in Lon- don. This is the twenty-third article in our regular series of “My London”. Oh my London how I have loved you. I thought it was the boys, then the men, then the babies I loved but it was you all along.
Sweet Dreams
Utopian ideas from an era that looked to the future with optimism. Robert Greer | Published in History Today Volume 70 Issue 7 July 2020 In January 1888, an unremarkable novelist called Edward Bellamy published Looking Backward 2000–1887. In the novel, a man in Boston falls asleep in the late 1880s and wakes up 113 years later, in an America of Universal Basic Income, where all property has been nationalised.
Excitement, Heart in Mouth, to Listen: 50 Years of Poetry International
Amongst the audience for the first Poetry International gathering, which took place in July 1967, was London writer Iain Sinclair. He’d come along to see Charles Olson, all six foot eight of him, but due to the American poet’s decision to sit in the aisle rather than taking a seat on stage, Sinclair got much closer to him than he expected.
The Leprechaun by Steven O'Brien
And so it all began with my grandad and the Leprechaun. He was a great man for singing and stories. His generation were happy to turn the television off on a Sunday evening and fill the silence with word-conjure. As I look back now, I see him in his mustard cardigan and suede shoes. His dentures gleam and his hair is Brylcreemed back, as slick as an otter’s pelt. The false teeth give his speech a whistling quality now and then. When he tells stories he often runs an open palm over his oily hair.
The Cheapest Bookstore in the World
How did bookselling develop from the preserve of the elite to the Amazon marketplace? It is due, in large part, to the actions of one man.
Review | Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
John Phipps Olive, again? Olive, Again, Elizabeth Strout, Viking, 2019, 304pp, £14.99 (hardback) Elizabeth’s Strout’s bestselling debut, Amy and Isabelle, announced the arrival of a serious talent. Her second, Abide With Me, went one better. With 2008’s Olive Kitteridge she moved from novels to a trickier form, the cycle of interconnected stories. It was that rare kind of book that can reasonably be called a masterpiece, and it won its author the Pulitzer prize.
Interview | Leo Dixon on Death in Venice at the Royal Opera House
Sessions for Death In Venice, photograph by Gavin Smart Stuart Martin Leo Dixon on Death in Venice at the Royal Opera House At only 23 years old, British dancer Leo Dixon has already begun an impressive career at the Royal Ballet. Not content with conquering the Royal Ballet, he is now making his Royal Opera debut, dancing the role of Tadzio in David McVicar’s new production of Benjamin Britten’s Death in Venice.
Review | Werther at the Royal Opera House
Juan Diego Florez as Werther in Werther at ROH, 2019. Photographed by Catherine Ashmore Massenet’s Werther makes a welcome return to the Royal Opera House in the third revival of Benoît Jacquot’s 2004 production. Based on Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The sorrows of young Werther), the opera follows the story of Werther and Charlotte, who meet and one night fall in love; but Charlotte’s fiancée Albert returns and obligation leads her to marry him.
Review | The Intelligence Park by Gerald Barry at the Royal Opera House
Production photo of The Intelligence Park, The Royal Opera © 2019 ROH. Photograph by Clive Barda The Royal Opera House seems to be celebrating the career of Gerald Barry this season. In February they are staging his latest opera, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, and now the first staging of his debut, The Intelligence Park, since its premiere in 1990, then a co-production with Music Theatre Wales, appearing as the opening opera of the Linbury Theatre’s second season.
Review | The Magic Flute at the Royal Opera House
A scene from Die Zauberflote by Mozart @ Royal Opera House. Directed by David McVicar. Conducted by Leo Hussain. (Opening 01-11-19) ©Tristram Kenton Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte returns to the Royal Opera House in the seventh revival of David McVicar’s incredible production. There is good reason that this production of Magic Flute has now been revived seven times. It is a fantasy masterpiece; there is no psychological overinterpretation or dabbling with anything that isn’t there.
Review | Don Pasquale by Donizetti at the Royal Opera House
Bryn Terfel as Don Pasquale at ROH, 2019, photograph by Clive Barda Don Pasquale by Donizetti is a frothy comedy – or at least it should be. This new production at the Royal Opera House by Damiano Michieletto is a curious mixture of comedy and cruelty. The opera is about an older man, Don Pasquale, who, after his nephew Ernesto refuses to marry the woman that Pasquale wants him to (since he is in love with someone else), cuts him off.
Review | I May Be Stupid But I’m Not That Stupid by Selima Hill
Charlie Baylis I May Be Stupid But I’m Not That Stupid I May Be Stupid But I’m Not That Stupid, Selima Hill, Bloodaxe Books, 2019, 152pp, £12.00 (paperback) ‘Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, our own, we see it multiplied…’ — Marcel Proust Selima Hill is a unique voice in contemporary British poetry, as the title of her latest collection — I May Be Stupid But I’m Not That Stupid — implies, there is more to her than meets the eye.
Fiction | The Dropout by Emmanuelle Pagano
Emmanuelle Pagano The Dropout I recognised you straight away, even from behind, from the way you walk: it makes you look slightly unbalanced or ruffled. You don’t limp, exactly, or really look annoyed, just folded, a bit wonky. I stopped. You turned round and I saw your name badge before I even looked at your face. It was you, no doubt about it. You were folding away your face as though you wanted to hide it. You got in the car without resisting, but then why would you have resisted?
The London Magazine Short Story Prize 2019
The London Magazine has published short stories by some of the most well-respected literary figures over the course of long history, from Jean Rhys to Raymond Carver and V.S. Pritchett. Our annual Short Story Competition seeks out new voices to join them. Established to encourage emerging literary talent, the award provides an opportunity for publication and recognition, rewarding imagination, originality and creativity.
Interview | Bahia Shehab: At the Corner of a Dream at the Aga Khan Centre Gallery
Film still from 'Imprisoned Butterflies', 'At the Corner of a Dream', by Bahia Shehab, 2019. Eric Block Bahia Shehab: At the Corner of a Dream at the Aga Khan Centre Gallery The acclaimed Egyptian-Lebanese artist, designer, educator and street art activistBahia Shehab’s work first came to global attention when she played an active role in the Arab Spring in 2011.
Review | Arnold Ivey’s AVENUE – Good to see British Food in St James - The London Magazine
Steven O’Brien Arnold Ivey’s AVENUE One of those first sharp days of Autumn. Post-summer London was freshened by the comparative lack of tourists, so it was an uncluttered joy to walk up the steps from the Mall, past the Duke of York Column and towards the solemn Crimea memorial to the Brigade of Guards. I suppose less than one in a hundred of the foreign tourists pause before the three bronze guardsmen, who stand forever ready in greatcoats and bearskins.
Review | Big Love by Balla and The Night Circus and Other Stories by Uršul’a Kovalyk
'Encounter in Space' (1898), Edvard Munch Andreea Scridon Big Love, The Night Circus and Other Stories Big Love by Balla, Jantar Publishing (trans. Julia and Peter Sherwood), 2019, 126 pp, £10.00 (paperback) The Night Circus and Other Stories by Uršul’a Kovalyk, Parthian Books (trans.
Essay | Becket back in the cathedral
The Martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury by Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre Simon Tait Becket back in the cathedral Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot, presented by Scena Mundi with Jasper Britton, directed by Cecilia Dorland, is at Southwark Cathedral, November 4, 5, 12 and 13; University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, November 8 & 9; Guildford Cathedral, November 14. Great drama has a way of always being relevant whenever it is performed, even if, like T. S.
Review | Flesh-Coloured Dominoes by Zigmunds Skujiņš
Michael Delgado Flesh-coloured dominoes Flesh-Coloured Dominoes, Zigmunds Skujiņš, translated by Kaija Straumanis, Arcadia Books, 2019, 245pp, £9.99 (paperback) On the face of it, Flesh-Coloured Dominoes is a book of two novels spliced together: its chapters alternate between two wildly different narratives.
Review | Underland by Robert Macfarlane
Alice Troy-Donovan Navigating the underworld Underland, Robert Macfarlane, Hamish Hamilton, 2019, 496 pp, £20.00 (hardback) How should writers respond to the ecological crisis? Both ‘crisis’ and the much-contested term ‘Anthropocene’ appear to bring us to the brink: there is, they tell us, no return to a state of innocence. If the possibility of an alternative future ever existed (and some claim it never did), then now it must be foregone.
News | Caoilinn Hughes, on winning the Collyer Bristow Prize 2019
Caoilinn Hughes On winning the Collyer Bristow Prize First thanks go to my peers—Sophie Mackintosh, Danny Denton, Samuel Fisher and Katherine Kilalea—for writing such good books that it was an intimidation and an honour to be on this shortlist with them. Thank you to the judges of this prize because, to me at least, books don’t exist without readers, and it is absurdly, painfully easy for a book to go unread, unstocked in a bookshop, unreviewed.
News | Collyer Bristow Prize: Caoilinn Hughes wins for Orchid & the Wasp
The Collyer Bristow Prize for Debut Fiction 2019, now in its second year, has been awarded to Caoilinn Hughes for her novel Orchid & the Wasp, a Bildungsroman about Gael Foess, a young woman navigating Dublin, London and New York, as she strives to build a life raft for her loved-ones amidst economic and familial collapse.
Review | After the Formalities by Anthony Anaxagorou
From the cover design by Zigmunds Lapsa Katie Mennis After the formalities After the Formalities, Anthony Anaxagorou, Penned in the Margins, 2019, 108 pp, £9.99 (paperback) & to the burning I say my worry is a whole country. […] flames lambent my grandmother died with umbrellas outstretched in her gut my grandmother died to be British is to be everywhere.
Poetry | Salome by Brit Parks
Brit Parks Salome Salome, stop believing this huzz pile Unfettered whale bones make you a forced companion I saw her making up the names for Laurel species There are 206 kinds, scientists eat Latin like it is milk-fed They cannot act tired of naming, we cannot act tired of hiding This act is forth-right in dependency and leaf alterations Worst-ed in upheaval, I am feeling my feathers moult I am happier with a junkie nerve for failure It is terrible terrifying to admit your bones are all...
Essay | Groaning Glaciers by Xenobe Purvis
Xenobe Purvis Groaning Glaciers Ice: I’ve always hated it. The way it brings your teeth together in a bite, a sinister sound. It’s cold and concrete-hard. Like a slap, it leaves your flesh ringing. I know I’m not alone in loathing winter – bitter and sunless months here in northern Europe. Ice abounds at this time of year, but even in spring, in the sweating heat of summer, you never have to look too far for it. It has preoccupied writers and artists for centuries.
Review | The Clearest Voice: Of Poetry and Protest by Theophilus Kwek
Theophilus Kwek ‘The Clearest Voice’: Of Poetry and Protest Deaf Republic, Ilya Kaminsky, Faber & Faber, 2019, 96pp, £10.99 (paperback) Flèche, Mary Jean Chan, Faber & Faber, 2019, 88pp, £10.99 (paperback) As I write this, the people of Hong Kong are gearing up for their thirteenth consecutive weekend of protests since Chief Executive Carrie Lam introduced her now-withdrawn extradition Bill in June – protests which, in recent weeks, have seen increasing police brutality matched by sheer...
Alvin Ailey Dance Theater Company at Sadler's Wells - The London Magazine
"Members Don't Get Weary", choreography: Jamar Roberts, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Photo credit: Paul Kolnik Alexis Keir When Ella met Alvin I first saw the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater Company during a visit to New York between Christmas and New Year in the mid-90s. I was entranced by the troupe and have never since missed a chance to see them on one of their infrequent visits to the UK.
Foreword to Zigmunds Skujiņš's Flesh-Coloured Dominoes - The London Magazine
The following essay is the foreword to the latest edition of Flesh-Coloured Dominoes, a novel by Zigmunds Skujiņš, first published in Latvian in 1999, now translated by Kaija Sraumanis for Arcadia Books. Christopher Moseley Foreword to Flesh-Coloured Dominoes Jelgava, lying just a short distance south of the Latvian capital Riga, once the seat of the Dukes of Courland as well as being a western outpost of the Russian Tsarist empire, has historically been something of a cultural crossroads.
Review | A Chip Shop in Poznań by Ben Aitken
A Chip Shop in Poznań, Ben Aitken, Icon Books, £10.50 (paperback) Ben Aitken arrived in Poland, he writes, ‘just after [David] Cameron came to Warsaw to cut the Poles some slack’ and left ‘with the sound of the triggered article still ringing in my ears’. In 2016, as the UK was on the verge of an unprecedented schism over Brexit, Aitken emigrated from Britain to Poland. He intended to find out why so many Poles have been moving to the UK in recent years and what they were leaving behind.
Unmitigated Disaster
The following essay is an extract from Kenneth Womack’s forthcoming book Solid State: The Story of “Abbey Road” and the End of the Beatles, which will be published by Cornell University Press in October. Kenneth Womack Unmitigated Disaster What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. — T. S.
Review | Parsifal at Bayreuth Festspiele
© Bayreuther Festspiele | Enrico Nawrath Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s thought-provoking, sometimes flawed production of Parsifal is revived for audiences at the Bayreuth Festspiele. The Bayreuth Festspiele is a type of pilgrimage for opera fans, and most particularly, fans of the composer Wagner. Bayreuth is where Wagner had a theatre built to showcase his operas (principally for his Ring Cycle).
Review | William Blake at Tate Britain
Newton, 1795 - c.1805, Colour print, ink and watercolour on paper, 460 x 600 mm, Tate Robert Greer William Blake at Tate Britain Thought to be mad by Wordsworth but considered a genius by Coleridge, William Blake (1757-1827) was an oddity during his lifetime.
Review | William Blake at Tate Britian
Newton, 1795 - c.1805, Colour print, ink and watercolour on paper, 460 x 600 mm, Tate Robert Greer William Blake at Tate Britain Thought to be mad by Wordsworth but considered a genius by Coleridge, William Blake (1757 – 1827) was an oddity during his lifetime — a genius engraver of images with a penchant for public nudity and political radicalism, a poet who would break off from conversation to confer with angels and spirits in the room, he is considered by many to be the closest thing...
Review | The Nowhere Man by Kamala Markandaya
The Nowhere Man, Kamala Markandaya, Small Axes, 2019, £10.99 (paperback) Real danger is never born of anything concrete. There are only words in the beginning. – Kamala Markandaya There were 71,251 race-related hate crimes recorded in 2017/18, according to a Home Office report. That’s an average of 195 racist incidents every day. Crimes such as these have rapidly increased in recent years due to escalations in the scapegoating of marginalised groups, manifesting the rise of far-right politics.
Interview | Sam Lock: Now/here at Cadogan Contemporary
Progress (Photoshoot), 2019. Courtesy of Cadogan Contemporary. Eric Block Now/here: Interview with Sam Lock This September Cadogan Contemporary presents Now/here, the largest solo presentation to date from acclaimed British artist Sam Lock. The artist’s third exhibition with the gallery, Now/here will display fifteen medium- and large-scale paintings, sculpture and a suite of works on paper showcasing Lock’s visceral style.
Review | The Fallen by Carlos Manuel Álvarez
The Fallen, Carlos Manuel Álvarez, trans. by Frank Wynne, Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2019, pp.136, £10.99 (paperback) The Fallen is only 136 pages long, but it bursts with resounding voices of unbridled pain. Carlos Manuel Álvarez’s polyphonic novel takes us across a Cuban family, each member with individual chapters — the son, the daughter, the mother, the father — in an arduous dissection of their daily lives.
Interview | Ben Turnbull: Manifest Decimation
American Progress (1872) by John Gast Eric Block Manifest Decimation: Interview with Ben Turnbull Since his first show in 2002, London-born artist Ben Turnbull has produced a compelling body of work exploring America in all its glory and iniquity. His forthcoming show American History X volume III, Manifest Decimation, will be on display at the Bermondsey Project Space from October 15. We caught up with the artist ahead of the exhibition to discuss empire, cowboys and his artistic process.
Essay | The King of Hay-on-Wye
Jane Frank The King of Hay-on-Wye A maverick anarchist, bookseller and entrepreneur, Richard Booth, who has died aged 80, transformed the small Powys town of Hay-on-Wye into a mecca for the second-hand book. His significant and colourful legacy in the book trade inspired a formula that has since been applied in more than 50 towns and villages in 27 countries world-wide as the resulting International Book Town Movement spread.
Review | Grace Under Pressure: David Foster Wallace on Tennis
Jeffrey Meyers Grace Under Pressure: David Foster Wallace on Tennis String Theory by David Foster Wallace, New American Library, 2016, pp.158, £16.99 (hardback) Many writers have played tennis: Nabokov, Frost, Pound, Hemingway, Theodore Roethke, Randall Jarrell, even Solzhenitsyn in Vermont and Martin Amis today. Like poetry, tennis has strict rules and requires technical skill. It is individual yet social, aesthetically pleasing, intellectual, at times erotic.
Interview | Robert Lundquist: Never say sorry or common words again
Brit Parks Never say sorry or common words again: Interview with Robert Lundquist My Father was a boxer. He taught me how to box when I was nine. This commonality, and the need to impress him, informed a great deal. When Charles Bukowski at an event asked me to ‘take it outside’ over a girl, I said okay. I was 21 and shy. Everyone at the party kept telling him not to ‘go outside with this kid’ because I knew how to box. His face truly looked like it had been run over by a truck.
Interview | Robert Lundquist: Never say sorry of common words again
Brit Parks Never say sorry of common words again: Interview with Robert Lundquist My Father was a boxer. He taught me how to box when I was nine. This commonality, and the need to impress him, informed a great deal. When Charles Bukowski at an event asked me to ‘take it outside’ over a girl, I said okay. I was 21 and shy. Everyone at the party kept telling him not to ‘go outside with this kid’ because I knew how to box. His face truly looked like it had been run over by a truck.
Review | Patience by Toby Litt
Patience by Toby Litt, Galley Beggar Press, 2019, pp.260, £15.00 (paperback) In every first-person narrative readers are ultimately trapped in the mind of the protagonist, doomed only to know what they know. In Patience, author Toby Litt takes this concept further by sharing the story of Elliott, who is himself trapped in his mind, as his disability inhibits most of his physical movement and verbal expression, leaving him with only the tiniest means of communication.
Interview | Varun Grover: Of Paper Thieves and Nuclear Ducks
Scherezade Siobhan Of Paper Thieves and Nuclear Ducks One of Varun Grover’s cats is called Chhenapoda, which translates to “Roasted Cheese” and is a beloved dessert from Odisha in eastern India. The writer and comic, who likes to name his favourite felines after confectionary, is perhaps best known instead for his biting satire. His standup comedy videos about Indian politics, the chintzier elements of Bollywood, and the rise of the right-wing, amass millions of hits online.
Review | Dragonfly by Jari Moate
Dragonfly, Jari Moate, Tangent Books, 2018, pp.300, £8.99 (paperback) Jari Moate’s novel Dragonfly begins with an ex-soldier known only as Marine P who, after serving in Syria, ensconces himself in an abandoned chocolate factory in Bristol. But what happens next is far from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as P must battle both his inner demons and the malevolent forces of the outside world.
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