It is a curious thing: there are giant disembodied heads that pop up in stories. What's the symbolism here? I'm not thinking of giant video screens or holographs (The Wizard of Oz, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Star Wars). I'm thinking real giant heads. The biggest of

The answer is: All of them, beginning with the Greeks and continuing to the present day. Individual candidates for who was the worst? It doesn't really matter, but those usually cited are Immanuel Kant, along with David Hume, John Locke, and G.W.F. Hegel, but is there

We have a new cat. I'm told he's a Nebelung, which apparently means the same thing as Nibelung from the Germanic legends. When the house next door was demolished, he adopted us instead of going with his original owners (they agreed to this), and now he

I have always been fascinated by train stations and I travel by train whenever I can. The best stations capture that sense of "in between" that we can get - well, I do - from waiting rooms, antechambers, portals, crossroads, and going through gates. Obviously there is one

Yes, they do. Unfortunately, today's dictators don't have a sense of humor and I expect they would have their court jester deported or even shot the moment they told the Truth. The kings and queens of yore who did have court jesters or - the term

Among my right-wing in-laws and social circle, conspiracy theories have always flourished and they are, if anything, intensifying in the Trump era. They push back on the science of global heating and their own carbon emissions, they think the Democrats allowed for "open borders," they see crime and

Many religious believers refuse to accept that their religion borrows from other religions, or even that it can evolve. For example, Judaism arose from ancient Canaanite religions and has continued to evolve, the ancient Egyptians and Greeks borrowed from all over the place, and Jesus Christ did not arise out

Or should it be the Lonely Maiden in the Tower? The old stories are still good today: I'm reminded of the retreat of rich Americans into enormous white 2-story box houses that all look the same – with walls, cameras, and a view where they can look down on

Today, it is hard to imagine any ghosts hanging around Tyburn, but for centuries, this spot by Marble Arch is where London executed more than 50,000 people. These were public executions. The last man to be hanged there was a highwayman, in 1783. But, all you can see today

Scroll down for the answers. #1: In what city? #2 In what country is Boar Lane, which once had this city's finest and most fashionable shops. Even better if you can identify the city. #3 What country? Even better if you can identify the city. #4 What European

What if, in medieval times, there was a book that defended young women from being forced into unwanted marriages? Nowadays, this idea generates some fascinating collisions in contemporary feminist and religious writing. More on this in a minute.  Legenda aurea was the most widely read religious work of the Late

Imagine you are in charge of an art exhibition and many of the paintings show flowers. Perhaps a woman is sniffing them; it's a pre-Raphaelite painting. How would you make this more appealing to general audiences? You might consider having flowery scents wafting through the gallery. Personally, I

Food and drink appear constantly in art and literature, as well as in film and television, but what about the perils of too much of a good thing? Over-eating, obesity, gout... No artist has better rendered it than the prolific Londoner James Gillray, who died in 1815. Below is George,

Venice is for me the city of Canaletto. For others, in literature and painting, Venice is a metaphor of death and the transience of life. Wagner died here in 1883 in the arms of his wife Cosima. Sergei Diaghilev, Ezra Pound and Igor Stravinsky are all buried on the Isola

The best-selling poet in America today, many say, is… er, a Muslim.  Not Whitman or Dickinson or Frost, but Rumi, a 13th century Persian poet and theologian, who lived most of his life in Konya, now Central Turkey.  But the versions that sell so well bear little resemblance to the

Louveciennes, on the south side of the Seine, and Le Vésinet, on the north side are now absorbed into the western suburbs of Paris. Once the railway line from Paris to St. Germain-en-Laye opened in 1848, painters, musicians, writers and dancers soon followed it out there, some of them to

Montreux at the eastern end of Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) these days is a tourist city associated with both pop culture and High Culture and, over the years, celebrities too many to mention. For pop culture, there is a statue of Queen’s Freddie Mercury staring out over the lake

Montmartre, literally "mountain of the martyr," where Saint Denis, Bishop of Paris, was beheaded around 250 AD. Not to be outdone, Denis picked up his head and walked to the top of the hill, preaching a sermon as he went. In his honor the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur was

"Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour." - T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922: King Ludwig II of Bavaria was drowned

Who said ballet has to be boring? The most stimulating moment in ballet history surely must have been at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in 1912 when Nijinsky ended The Afternoon of a Faun by simulating masturbation in front of a full house. It caused a riot just as

It’s fair to say the silly debate between Art vs Pornography is now over. For all the millions of words defending or collapsing the difference, there is no Art, no Pornography. There is only art with sexual content or art without it. Not that art galleries and museums can

Below, could this be feminist art critics chopping off the head of a patriarch perhaps? Those women certainly look determined. Influenced by Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi painted her version of Judith Beheading Holofernes and it has been the subject of much debate. In mid-1611, the 17-year-old Gentileschi may, or may not,

Caravaggio painted the infamous picture shown below in 1598. The following year a Roman noblewoman Beatrice Cenci (shown above) was executed publicly along with other family members for her part in the lurid murder of her father, who reportedly had raped her repeatedly. Was there a connection here? This painting

Fowey in Cornwall has many literary associations going back to Joseph of Arimathea, of Holy Grail fame no less. Joseph, introduced in Luke 23, is known for burying the body of Jesus in the tomb, assisted by Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus. But there is a legend

Boucher, one of the most celebrated French painters of the 18th century, was in the eyes of his detractors (like Diderot), nothing but a pimp. He used his beautiful wife as a model and he privately indulged in erotica like the painting below, Leda and the Swan, which is only