Culture

What makes for meaningful political protest? In regimes where ideology was taken seriously (such as the Soviet Union or America during the Cold War), dissidents and dissenters could target rulers’ political ideas, whether communist or capitalist. But in regimes where ideology is used more to distract than indoctrinate (such as Putin’s Russia or Trump’s America), directly opposing the leaders’ ‘narrative’ (one which can change, depending on political expedience) risks playing right into their game.

It’s odd, when you think about it, that mathematics ever got going. We have no innate genius for numbers. Drop five stones on the ground, and most of us will see five stones without counting. Six stones are a challenge. Presented with seven stones, we will have to start grouping, tallying and making patterns. This is arithmetic, ‘a kind of “symbol knitting”’ according to the maths researcher and sometime teacher Paul Lockhart, whose Arithmetic explains how counting systems evolved to facilitate communication and trade, and ended up watering (by no very obvious route) the metaphysical gardens of mathematics. Lockhart shamelessly (and successfully) supplements the archeological record with invented number systems of his own.

Theatre buildings are seriously interesting – as I ought to have appreciated sooner in the course of 25 years writing about theatre and opera. This coffee-table whopper, weighing in at just under a kilo, dazzles: Michael Coveney’s text is even better than Peter Dazeley’s remarkable photographs. And in a luminous foreword, Mark Rylance sets out the not-so-obvious difference between theatre and cinema: ‘In a theatre you need to hear the truth. In a cinema you need to see it.’ Most of the theatre audience can’t see the actor’s eyes, and have to rely on hearing emotion in the voice and, to a lesser extent, detecting emotion in body language. Hence the importance of lighting.

Towards the end of his life, Robert Louis Stevenson travelled widely in the central and southern Pacific Ocean. As well as the region’s exotic reputation, he was drawn by hopes that its benign climate would alleviate his chronic bronchial problems. In 1889 he arrived in Samoa and decided to settle there. He was a hit with the locals. Unlike so many of his peers, he declined to dismiss them as savages. Certainly, he was scathing about their disregard for property rights, which he labelled communism, and he found some of the women’s dancing obscene. But Joseph Farrell tells us that Stevenson was relaxed about extensive tattoos and scanty attire, and that he was a willing participant in kava drinking (kava is a narcotic plant extract, recently banned in the UK).

The title of this book, By the Pen and What They Write, is a quotation from the Qur’an and comes from the opening of the ‘Surah al-Qalam’ (Chapter of the Pen), in which the authority of the cosmic scribes in heaven, whose writing determines the fate of humanity, is invoked in order to authenticate the revelation that follows. According to Islamic tradition, the Prophet Muhammad was illiterate (and so presumably were most of his audience). So it is odd to find writing featuring so prominently in this surah and throughout the Qur’an.

This week, in the books podcast, I talk to Harriett Gilbert - who has a good claim to be the voice of books on radio. With the 15th anniversary of the BBC World Service's World Book Club (nine Nobel and 17 Booker winners have been guests to date), which she's presented from its first episode and in which world-class writers discuss their best known books. I ask her about her life and career, the changing literary landscape, and why she doesn't write novels herself any more. You can listen to our conversation here: And if you enjoyed that, do subscribe on iTunes for a new episode every Thursday. A special 15th Anniversary edition of World Book Club goes out on Sunday, featuring Sebastian Barry talking about The Secret Scripture.