London Times Research Articles

A Memoir of London: A Reading on Ghazi AlQosaibi’s Bye-Bye London and Anna Quindlen’s Imagined London

This paper aims to present impressions of London “indisputably the capital of literature”, by two culturally diverse novelists and their works: the first is the Saudi diplomat, novelist, and poet Dr. Gazi AlQosaibi’s (1940-2010) Bye-Bye London (2002) and the American renowned Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Qindlen’s (1953) Imagined London (2004). The researcher used a textual analysis approach to analyze the novels. This study is an add-value to the body of knowledge by contributing to the literature of A Memoir of London and Imagined London. It addresses the manifold concept and diverse determinations of images related to the identity of London. In addition, it examines the different representations that reflect the different circumstances, defined by time and place in London. A thorough reading of both works will not only provide many insights about London, the city, but also a literary and intellectual biography of the writers themselves. Thus, a reading of their works, comparing, and contrasting them will be ostensible to further highlight their recollections, reminisces, and experiences of “the capital of the world”. The results showed that Bye, Bye London, and Imagined London are examples of honor to a metropolitan that includes one of the greatest fictional and ancient pasts. These novellas are not as thorough as Peter Ackroyd’s London: a Biography (2001) which Quindlen positions in the volume.

The Trees Speak for Themselves

Elif Shafak's 2021 novel The Island of Missing Trees describes fictional events that occur on the real island of Cyprus during the war between the Greek and the Turkish inhabitants of the island. This story is told from multiple points of view at various points in time in both Cyprus and London, where the characters move to and live following the events of the war and their families’ disagreements with their relationship. What is unique about Shafak's storytelling is her use of a fig tree as a primary narrator of events. While the use of non-human narrators is not a new strategy, most of these occurrences involve animal speakers rather than plants or objects. In delivering a fiction narrative from the point of view of a fig tree, Elif Shafak's The Island of Missing Trees introduces readers to multispecies encounters by providing an example of how arboreal figures communicate and experience history alongside humans in an anthropocentric world, and further encourages prosocial behavior between human and non-human species. Based on Shafak's novel, theories of attentiveness and slow-violence, and studies on the effect of non-human narrators on readers, including these "non-living" narrators in widely accessible pieces of fiction not only informs audiences of the multispecies encounters that occur in everyday life, but also opens more avenues of multispecies conservation.

Robert Louis Stevenson and German Sāmoa

ABSTRACT This study revisits the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson on German Sāmoa as a valuable archive for understanding the impact of Western colonialism on the Pacific. It examines Stevenson’s anti-colonial perspectives in writings such as A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa (1892), his series of letters to The Times in London (1889–1894), and his private correspondence. Stevenson’s analysis of the impact of the Germans’ militarism and meddlesome officialdom, together with their extensive plantation system and use of unfree labour, also provides an important context for reading contemporary Oceanian writers and artists. The varied creative practices of recovery and remediation deployed by Albert Wendt, Sia Figiel, Yuki Kihara, Michel Tuffery and Tony Brunt, are often inspired by cultural memories of German Sāmoa.

“Reader, Take Notice”: Aphra Behn’s References and Self-Representation in the Epistle to the Reader in The Dutch Lover

Aphra Behn is generally regarded as the first Englishwoman to have lived by the pen, not an easy feat in the competitive world of the literary world of Restoration London. While her early life remains a mystery, her time in London and her allegiances are very well-documented. Throughout her whole career, she crafted a persona that interacted with her readers and the audience in her paratexts; however, the self she presented in the early stages of her career through the references she made has never been fully considered. Investigating these allusions can help fill in the blanks of what is known about her and revisit older conceptions. This study explores and identifies the references she made and the communicative strategies she used in her epistle to the reader printed with The Dutch Lover (1673) and what they mean in terms of the self she crafted.

Who’s Afraid of Italo Svevo? Routes of European Modernism between Trieste and Virginia Woolf’s London

Abstract The Triestine author Italo Svevo spent a considerable amount of time in London and its environs between 1901 and 1926. His experiences there influenced his modernist writing, including Zeno’s Conscience, his most famous novel. Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press was the first to publish Svevo’s work in English. His story “The Hoax” marked their first translation from Italian and his short story collection The Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl and Other Stories their second, helping shape the press’s international modernist program. Despite residing in the same quickly changing city in the same period and despite their literary connections, Svevo and Virginia Woolf have rarely been compared. They have been difficult to envision together in part because their gender, backgrounds, and nationalities separate them. By exploring Woolf’s and Svevo’s shared modernist networks, including London’s influence and Hogarth Press, this article reveals Svevo’s significance as an author who has not easily fit Anglophone paradigms of modernist fiction and whose associations with Woolf contribute to the growing challenges to nation-based literary histories.

Did women have an industrious revolution? Women's time and work in London, 1750–1830

AbstractThis article firstly advances a methodological critique of Hans-Joachim Voth's influential study of labour input during the English industrial revolution, arguing that Voth's ingenious and potentially widely applicable method of inferring time-use from court testimony has flaws such that at least the absolute figures yielded are likely unreliable. Secondly, with the method's deficiencies in mind, this article applies a version of it to the Old Bailey court records in order to examine change in women's working time in London between the 1750s and 1830. Results include that women in London did not observe Saint Monday even in the 1750s, and that the time that women in London spent in paid work increased only slightly between the 1750s and 1830.

‘The natural leader of the proletariat’: Eduard Bernstein on trade unions and the path to socialist cooperation

ABSTRACT This paper offers a reinterpretation of Eduard Bernstein’s theory of evolutionary socialism. It does so by examining the leading role that he envisioned for unions of skilled workers in the socialist movement. During his time in London in the 1890s, Bernstein’s engagement with English Fabianism led him to emphasize the proletariat’s differentiated nature. He claimed skilled workers most readily organized and became the first proletarians to develop class consciousness. Unskilled workers, on the other hand, remained largely unorganized and estranged from the socialist movement. Bernstein opposed the socialist political strategy of nationalization because it would subordinate unskilled workers to party revolutionaries rather than realize cooperative self-government in industry. This focus on promoting industrial self-government made Bernstein stress the importance of workers’ further unionization and adoption of skilled unionists’ method of collective bargaining. This would produce socialist cooperation because it facilitated cooperative wage determination. In Bernstein’s view, skilled unionists influenced the socialist party to take political action to organize and elevate more proletarians to class consciousness. In contrast to those who claim Bernstein prioritized the party’s autonomous ethical appeals and legislation, I emphasize his focus on union-party interactions and defense of unions as central for the advance into socialism’s cooperative society.

Short-Term Speed Variability as an Index of Pacing Stochasticity in Athletic Running Events.

We aimed to compare differences in performance and pacing variability indices between 5000 m heats and finals during major championships in men and women. Data with 100 m time resolution were used to compare overall pacing variability (standard deviation of 100 m section times, SD; and coefficient of variation, CV%) and short-term pacing variability (root mean square of successive differences between 100 m section times, RMSSD). The changes in performance and pacing indices differed between races and competitions. For instance, the men's final in Beijing 2008 was quicker than the heat (p < 0.01) while the CV% was reduced (p = 0.03) and RMSSD increased (p < 0.01). For women, the heats and the final exhibited a similar mean time in London 2017 (p = 0.33) but with CV% (p < 0.001) and RMSSD (p < 0.001) showing opposite trends. Individual analyses of men's and women's champions revealed highly individual variability metrics. The use of RMSSD can complement overall variability indices for better characterization of pacing stochasticity.

Executive function improvement in response to meta-cognitive training in chronic mTBI / PTSD.

We tested Goal Management Training (GMT), which has been recommended as an executive training protocol that may improve the deficits in the complex tasks inherent in life role participation experienced by those with chronic mild traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disease (mTBI/PTSD). We assessed, not only cognitive function, but also life role participation (quality of life). We enrolled and treated 14 individuals and administered 10 GMT sessions in-person and provided the use of the Veterans Task Manager (VTM), a Smartphone App, which was designed to serve as a "practice-buddy" device to ensure translation of in-person learning to independent home and community practice of complex tasks. Pre-/post-treatment primary measure was the NIH Examiner, Unstructured Task. Secondary measures were as follows: Tower of London time to complete (cTOL), Community Reintegration of Service Members (CRIS) three subdomains [Extent of Participation; Limitations; Satisfaction of Life Role Participation (Satisfaction)]. We analyzed pre-post-treatment, t-test models to explore change, and generated descriptive statistics to inspect given individual patterns of change across measures. There was statistically significant improvement for the NIH EXAMINER Unstructured Task (p < .02; effect size = .67) and cTOL (p < .01; effect size = .52. There was a statistically significant improvement for two CRIS subdomains: Extent of Participation (p < .01; effect size = .75; Limitations (p < .05; effect size = .59). Individuals varied in their treatment response, across measures. In Veterans with mTBI/PTSD in response to GMT and the VTM learning support buddy, there was significant improvement in executive cognition processes, sufficiently robust to produce significant improvement in community life role participation. The individual variations support need for precision neurorehabilitation. The positive results occurred in response to treatment advantages afforded by the content of the combined GMT and the employment of the VTM learning support buddy, with advantages including the following: manualized content of the GMT; incremental complex task difficulty; GMT structure and flexibility to incorporate individualized functional goals; and the VTM capability of ensuring translation of in-person instruction to home and community practice, solidifying newly learned executive cognitive processes. Study results support future study, including a potential randomized controlled trial, the manualized GMT and availability of the VTM to ensure future clinical deployment of treatment, as warranted.

Transmathematica 2022

Transmathematica 2022: The 4th International Conference on Total Systems was held online, using Zoom, on 29 September 2022 at 14.45 - 18.00, London time. Edited video recordings have been uploaded to the Transmathematica channel on YouTube. We now present the conference proceedings. We note a significant offer of donations to Transmathematica and announce Transmathematica 2023: The 5th International Conference on Total Systems.

Changing Times

Changing Times

Spitsbergen Through The Times

British mining and exploration companies were active in Spitsbergen, today Svalbard, between 1904 and 1953. This period was marked by events like the First World War and the signing of the Spitsbergen Treaty, some say Svalbard Treaty, and was therefore politically charged. This article investigates the British Arctic enterprise as portrayed in an influential newspaper, the London Times, where a diverse range of items appeared across the sections Advertising, Business, News, Editorials, and Letters to the Editor. Reports of the London Stock Exchange and the London Gazette serve as factual counterweights to potentially subjective media coverage. In four distinct phases, we see the archipelago’s emergence in global politics, post-war optimism until the settlement of all claim disputes in 1927, a quiet phase caused by global economic depression, and renewed but short-lived optimism after the Second World War. The paper concludes that the British Government took a stance in the Spitsbergen Question already in 1907, and the Times could not be instrumentalised to change this official political opinion. The study offers a baseline for new and comparative research using similar historical sources.

Miriam: Friend, Mentor, Scholar, and Teacher

MiriamFriend, Mentor, Scholar, and Teacher Sarita Rai (bio) I met Miriam at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in 1995 when she was appointed as the faculty resident director for the London study abroad program. Later, when she was the honors director in 1998, we collaborated to implement a joint student recruitment program to persuade Hawai‘i high school seniors (public and private) to attend UH Mānoa and to make it their “choice” university. This way, as freshmen they could take specialized classes in the honors program and also go abroad. I write about her personal statement for the London resident directorship because it resonates with the same type of mentorship and friendship she gave me. She states, “a semester abroad will be successful if its participants ‘take part in’ and are ‘engaged in’ all things the program can offer. But it will be an experience that participants will cherish for the rest of their lives, if ‘cooperating’ and ‘lending a hand’ lead them to form a learning and experiential community that involves partnership.” Within this partnership she saw herself as “cooperating, lending a hand, and engaging” her students so they would excel in learning and experiencing their term abroad. To demonstrate the outcome, I take the liberty of quoting some of her students’ writings. These are samples of tributes to Miriam Fuchs: “thanks for being such a great teacher . . . my writing has improved,” “you opened my eyes to literature in a whole new way,” and “dear Dr. Fuchs, I will always remember my time in London. You are an inseparable part of that memory. You gave us all guidance and support, asking nothing in return. Thank you.” This was the nature of her mentorship that I experienced as well, and I cherish her role in my life. She asked for nothing in return. Somehow, we transitioned from the beginnings of a professional relationship to one of deep and enduring friendship. She was a mentor to me in every step of my life. Miriam insisted on reviewing my promotion application dossier, and acquired a deep knowledge and understanding of the study abroad programs and my job responsibilities. She would always remark that I “had the worst job as a faculty member of the University of Hawai‘i.” On another note, with her urging, we embarked on a journey to coedit Study Abroad: Traditions and New Directions (2019). When she had writer’s block she would have tantrums, and I would just sit, listen, and watch her. This is why she would always call me an “easy friend.” I, on the [End Page 151] other hand, would stop working on the book for long periods of time—and she would guilt me into going back to the project. She was resilient and never gave up on me. Together we wrote and published, and we complemented one another in the relationship that formed. She would listen to one of my ideas and go off on a tangent that had no bearing on the original thought. She spent a great deal of time reading on study abroad topics and somehow had the patience in writing and rewriting, over and over again, till the piece was just perfect. As a political scientist, I had radical views and opinions, but she had the wisdom to know that to get published I needed to be neutral and noncontroversial. She, of course, was correct, so I always agreed with her in the end. I had said “let’s have lunch,” and never followed up. Three months later, I found out that she had her cancer surgery and treatment, and I had missed it all. It taught me to never put off anything if you want to do something. I still hear her saying, “I don’t want to talk about it,” when she didn’t want to update me about her health. We also ignored each other and hardly talked on the phone when in Hawai‘i. She knew she could count on me, so she never worried when I was not traveling. However, she would worry and stress whenever I was out of the country, and even made sure that we talked...

Revolutionary Nihilism and Romantic Notions

Revolutionary Nihilism and Romantic Notions Donald Mackenzie Wallace [SIR] DONALD MACKENZIE WALLACE (1841–1919) was an author, editor, and foreign correspondent who over the course of his lifetime also traveled extensively as a cultural interpreter and political adviser in Russia, South Asia, and the Near and Middle East. Born in Scotland to a prosperous family, he was orphaned by the age of ten, and in his early adolescence resolved to secure for himself an education equal to his far-reaching ambitions. Undertaking studies centered on ethics and metaphysics at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, he went on to advanced work in law and jurisprudence at the École de Droit in Paris and at the Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, where he was awarded the Doctor of Laws degree when he was twenty-six. Wallace was preparing himself for an academic career in comparative law in Germany when a friend in Petersburg, knowing of his interest in the Ossetes, offered him an opportunity to visit this remote tribe of Iranian origin living in the Caucasus. "In accepting this invitation from my Petersburg friend," Wallace later recalled, "my intention was to spend about a year in studying the Russian language and certain Russian institutions which specially interested me, and then to devote one, two, or three years to a thorough study of the Ossetes. Gradually I saw reason to change my plans. On closer inspection the Russians turned out to be a much more, and the Ossetes a much less, interesting subject of study than I expected, and instead of one I devoted six years to Russia proper." The result of Wallace's sustained investigations, involving prolonged stays in country villages as well as major cities, was his most famous work, his study entitled Russia, first published in two volumes in 1877, just before the outbreak of the Russo–Turkish War (with subsequent editions in 1905 and 1912), which was described by the Times Literary Supplement as "the most authoritative work on Russia in the English language" and which seems in many ways comparable in its richness of insight to Tocqueville's Democracy in America. After the appearance of this book Wallace was appointed a foreign correspondent for the London Times, where he continued to work on and off in various capacities for more than two decades, issuing reports from central Europe, the Balkans, Turkey, and Egypt (his book Egypt and the Egyptian Question came out in 1883). He also served as private secretary to a viceroy to India and was asked to accompany the duke and duchess of Cornwall (who became King George V and Queen Mary) on their tour of British territories all over the world, subsequently recording these travels in The Web of Empire, published in 1902. As the excerpt offered here would suggest, Wallace's analysis of Russian history and culture is distinguished by an unfailing lucidity and steadiness of judgment matched by a remarkable acuteness of observation and depth of sympathy—a combination of qualities rarely achieved. These pages are taken from the 1912 edition of Russia, published in London by Cassell and Company. —SD [End Page 179] ________ Strange to say, the newest and most advanced doctrines appeared regularly, under a very thin and transparent veil, in the St. Petersburg daily press, and especially in the thick monthly magazines, which were as big as, or bigger than, our venerable quarterlies. The art of writing and reading "between the lines," not altogether unknown under the Draconian regime of Nicholas I, was now developed to such a marvelous extent that almost anything could be written clearly enough to be understood by the initiated without calling forth the thunderbolts of the press censure, which was now only intermittently severe. Indeed, the press censors themselves were sometimes carried away by the reform enthusiasm. One of them long afterwards related to me that during "the mad time," as he called it, in the course of a single year he had received from his superiors no less than seventeen reprimands for passing objectionable articles without remark. The movement found its warmest partisans among the students and young literary men, but not a few gray-beards were to be found among the...

Transmathematica 2021

Transmathematica 2021: The 3rd International Conference on Total Systems was held online, using Zoom, on 5th July 2021 from 12.45 - 18.00 London Time. Edited video recordings were uploaded to a new Transmathematica channel on YouTube. We now present the conference proceedings and announce Transmathematica 2022: The 4th International Conference on Total Systems.

Review: Eileen Gray, Designer and Architect

Review: <i>Eileen Gray, Designer and Architect</i>

Satya Prokash Mukherjee

Satya Prokash Mukherjee was born in Howrah, India, in 1934 and died at the Whittington Hospital, London. After qualifying he spent four years at the Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi before...

Logics of Disintegration in Lawrence and Huxley

When Lawrence met Aldous Huxley for the first time in London in December 1915, he invited him on the spot to join the colony he planned to launch in Florida. “I like Huxley very much,” Lawrence told their mutual patron, Lady Ottoline Morrell. “He will come to Florida.” Huxley’s account was more hedged, but he remained interested in joining Lawrence and company temporarily. The colony, of course, never transpired, but this meeting provided a venue for the exchange of utopian hopes, as well as skepticism, that expressed themselves in the writings of both authors during the next several years. Indeed Lawrence and Huxley frequently responded critically and satirically to each other’s utopian and dystopian impulses – to each other’s acknowledgment of human tragedy but also their efforts to resist it.

Ian Archibald McGlashan

Ian Archibald McGlashan was born in Glasgow, Scotland. During the second world war the family home was moved to Maybole in Ayrshire, where he went to primary school. His life...

Egyptian Darkness: Antebellum Reconstruction, "Republicanization," and Southern Illinois in the Republican Imagination, 1854–61

Egyptian DarknessAntebellum Reconstruction, "Republicanization," and Southern Illinois in the Republican Imagination, 1854–61 Eric Michael Burke (bio) At 4:00 p.m. on June 23, 1861, the final northbound train of the day crawled out of the swampy confines of Cairo, Illinois, carrying London Times correspondent William Howard Russell away from the "cheerless, miserable place" in which he had sojourned over the previous four days. Four months had transpired since he first arrived in New York City to begin a grand tour of the now fractured United States. His journey had led southward through the urban centers of the Northeast, into the so-called Confederate States of America, and now carried him northward again through the fabled "North-west." Thus far, his return to the "Free States" had been less than impressive. Although his travels throughout the slave South had poignantly illustrated the severely detrimental effects of the peculiar institution on both black and white Americans, he had quite enjoyed partaking as a guest in the luxurious lifestyle of the elite slaveholding class. Now, finding himself crammed into an uncomfortable passenger car alongside scores of "wild-looking banditti" masquerading as soldiers and "a few unfortunate women, undergoing deportation to some less moral neighborhood," he began to wonder if the United States really was "the most enlightened nation in the world," as it so often claimed to be.1 Perhaps in an effort to avoid conversation, Russell peered out of his window into the "wild, flat sea of waving grass, dotted by patch-like Indian corn enclosures" that, together with spotty "forests of dead trees," comprised the southern Illinois landscape. The first station—Mound City—"a mere heap of earth" dotted with "a few log huts and hovels" seemed out of place resting alongside the internationally [End Page 167] renowned and still all but brand new Illinois Central Railroad. As if able to read his mind, the "jolly-looking, corpulent man" seated next to Russell explained at once how the character of the settlers that dwelled in such out-of-the-way places were acknowledged to be "awful warnings to the emigrants not to stick in the south part of Illinois." Further down the track, the larger stations at Jonesboro, Cobden, and Carbondale confirmed such notions. Surrounded by cornfields that "bore a peculiarly blighted and harassed look," none of the communities looked to be "very flourishing nor very civilized."2 Although, he admitted, it was slightly unfair to "judge the condition of a people from the windows of a railway carriage," he nevertheless did just that in his travel diary. "The external aspect of the settlements along the line, far superior to that of slave hamlets, does not equal my expectations," he noted. Beyond a telling volume of "drinking saloons" (four were visible from the tracks in Cobden alone), where Russell was sure "the highest citizen in the place" hobnobbed familiarly with "the worst rowdy in the place," there seemed little to distinguish "one of these civilising centres which the Americans assert to be the homes of the most cultivated and intelligent communities in the world." Taking the opportunity to poke fun at the shortcomings of democracy, he added that, "though they do carry a vote for each adult man, 'locations' here would not appear very enviable in the eyes of the most miserable Dorsetshire small farmer." Indeed, he added, there was "a level modicum of comfort, which may be consistent with the greatest good of the greatest number," as purported by proponents of republican government, "but which makes the standard of the highest in point of well-being very low indeed." As far as Russell could tell, noticing a wooden placard left over from the recent election, which read: "Vote for Lincoln and Hamlin, for Union and Freedom" and was defaced with "bitter words" and "offensive additions," the degeneracy visible from his car window was proof of just that.3 Receiving equal amounts of attention and opprobrium from American readers upon its US publication in 1863, the anti-republican rhetoric and critical outlook on democratic government expressed in Russell's My Diary North and South rankled a still nascent American nationalism made all the more sensitive after two years...