The Pluto Files
Dale E. Gary enjoys reading about the surprising public outcry that followed Pluto's demotion
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The Fenian Problem: Insurgency and Terrorism in a Liberal State, 1858-1874
The modern history of the "Irish Question" begins with Fenianism, a mid-Victorian organisation that developed and adapted the strategies of militant nationalist activity that would become commonplace...
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Magic Flutes and Enchanted Forests: The Supernatural in Eighteenth-Century Musical Theater
In the past two decades, musicologists have realised the importance of putting an operatic work in a historical, cultural, theatrical and literary context. For the most part, the research of opera...
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Becoming Batman
Adam Rutherford finds little intellectual punch in an analysis of impossibly muscly men in tights
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Published this week
BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT- The Management of Everyday LifeEdited by Philip Hancock, senior lecturer in organisation studies, University of Warwick, and Melissa Tyler, senior lecturer in organisation...
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Self-help the only way to speak in tongues 1
Your report on the dearth of foreign-language skills among British graduates emphasises one of the problems that has beset the long-running debate about the decline of such skills in higher education...
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Self-help the only way to speak in tongues 2
While it is essential that more school pupils choose one or two languages at GCSE level, UCL's decision to stand alone in making a C grade in a foreign-language GCSE an entry requirement is perhaps...
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Self-help the only way to speak in tongues 3
Your excellent critique of the marginalisation of languages in British education nevertheless fails to stress their full importance for research, especially in the humanities. Researchers need...
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Feedback cutback
It is that time of year again when those of us with pending funding applications make the trip to the office post room a little more often. I have been waiting on several responses, in common with...
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Playing the race card
"In my opinion, the book is racist - or at least as close to racism as you can get in writing without breaking the law," Thomas Hegghammer writes in his review of my book The Mind of Jihad (11 June...
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Exhilarating, not the pits
Of the two academics you quote in "Sandpits bring out worst in infantilised researchers" (2 July), the first, Thomas Docherty, hasn't been to one; the second, an unnamed researcher, apparently hasn't...
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History is bunk
In "1588 and all that" (11 June), Felipe Fernandez-Armesto takes a pointless (if inoffensive) swipe at Ben Macintyre for stating that less than 50 per cent of under-34s know that "Sir Francis Drake...
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Total commitment
I would like to make it clear that the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council is committed to the agenda outlined by Lord Drayson regarding focusing research funding on areas of...
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Let sleeping dogmata lie 1
Caron Dann (From where I sit, 2 July) has every right to be irritated by the misuse of English by her students. No one who values the accurate use of language could be anything less than disturbed by...
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Let sleeping dogmata lie 2
It is difficult to convey the value of grammar to students who have only experienced it as an indicator of social status. Their teachers have failed to show how knowledge of grammar supports...