Better Known

Nigel Biggar discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Nigel Biggar is Emeritus Regius Professor in the University of Oxford and Fellow of Christ Church. He founded in Oxford the MacDonald Institute for the study of Ethics and Empire. He is now a Fellow of St Cross College Oxford, and an author, lecturer and broadcaster throughout the English-speaking world. After many acclaimed academic books, he wrote and published the bestselling Colonialism. His new book is The New Dark Age: Why Liberals Must Win The Culture Wars, which is available at https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-new-dark-age-why-liberals-must-win-the-culture-wars--9781509568321.

Terence Malick's 1998 film, The Thin Red Line https://www.theguardian.com/film/1999/feb/26/film-of-the-week-the-thin-red-line

Helmuth James von Moltke (1907-45), anti-Nazi martyr https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19666775-last-letters-the-prison-correspondence-between-helmuth-and-freya-von-mo

Sir John Malcolm (1769-1833): exemplar of empire https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/sir-john-malcolm

'Mass graves' discovery in grounds of an Indian Residential School at Kamloops, BC, Canada, May 2021: to this day, no body has been disinterred. https://www.fraserinstitute.org/commentary/no-evidence-of-mass-graves-or-genocide-in-residential-schools

The World Values Survey 2023: showing Britain to be one of the least racist countries on earth. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/research-analysis/uk-world-values-survey

Kathleen Stock, martyr in the cause of free and honest thinking on campus https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/mar/26/university-of-sussex-fined-freedom-of-speech-investigation-kathleen-stock

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Matt Kaplan discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Matt Kaplan is a science correspondent at the Economist. He is the author of The Science of Monsters and Science of the Magical, and co-author of David Attenborough’s First Life: A Journey Through Time. His new book is I Told You So! Scientists who were Ridiculed, Exiled and Imprisoned for Being Right, which is available at https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250372284/itoldyouso/.

The few doctors who worked out that handwashing was essential for preventing the spread of disease were attacked by their peers https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/ignaz-semmelweis-doctor-prescribed-hand-washing

George Washington disobeyed direct orders from the Continental Congress and inoculated his troops against smallpox during the Revolutionary War https://historyofvaccines.org/blog/washingtons-war-against-smallpox-revolutionary-inoculation-campaign/

Louis Pasteur was a vicious fellow who engaged in academic fraud. https://cms.viroliegy.com/2022/02/25/louis-pasteurs-unethical-rabies-fraud/

The mild mannered French physician Pierre Alexandre Louis worked out that the common practice of blood-letting was terrible for patients. https://www.grunge.com/812824/the-radical-history-of-bloodletting-explained/

Katalin Kariko https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/scientists-egos-key-barrier-to-progress-covid-vaccine-pioneer-katalin-kariko

Experiments exploring novel ideas are getting rarer as the effort needed to get research done steadily goes up https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20180338

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Jane Dougherty discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Jane Dougherty, of Irish origin, grew up in Yorkshire and now lives in France. She began writing by coming up with short stories and a YA series for her teenage children. Her first novel was published by an American publisher Musa in 2014. Since then, her poetry and short stories have been published online, in anthologies and magazines. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and has published three poetry pamphlets. Her most recent novel, The Darkest Tide was published by Northodox Press in 2025. Pasiphae is available at https://www.waterstones.com/book/9781917163293

Déjà s'envole la fleur maigre (Paul Meyer, 1960) https://www.artforum.com/columns/paul-meyers-deja-senvole-la-fleur-maigre-231206/

Beatrice Cenci https://www.througheternity.com/rome/beatrice-cenci-life-death-rome

The Lot-et-Garonne département https://www.guide-du-lot-et-garonne.com/en/tourism/discover/the-lot-et-garonne.html

The works of Natalia Ginzburg https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1985/11/07/the-force-of-habit/

The painter Franz Marc https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n12/michael-hofmann/at-the-orangerie

The Irish legend about Grainne and Diarmuid https://www.discoveringireland.com/the-legend-of-diarmuid-and-grainne/

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Adam Steiner discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Adam Steiner is a swim-teacher, freelance journalist and author. When not saving lives he sits dreaming about all the books he will never write. 

He has written several books of music criticism: Into The Never: Nine Inch Nails And The Creation Of The Downward Spiral, Silhouettes And Shadows: The Secret History of David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) and Darker With The Dawn: Nick Cave's Songs Of Love And Death.

He runs the Disappear Here poetry film project – 27 x collaborative poetry-films about Coventry Ringroad – and now curates the Living With Buildings poetry film series, screening experimental films about people, poetry and place. For more information, go to https://adamsteiner.uk/.

Being There, Jerzy Kozinski: movie and book – so this is a great example of late/last great art - Peter Sellers was very attached to the story and was determined to make the movie, so he had do more pink panthers for the studio to back him.

Lifeguards / Swim Teachers - under-appreciated, under-sexed, underpaid its one of the hardest jobs out there - sitting in a chair dreaming, not doing anything, but people always take it for granted.

40 - So we're always told that 40 is the new 30 etc - but it's a dangerous, difficult age.

When Biographies Become Biopics: Will Self said writers reading biographies of other writers is basically lit-porn – so we get caught up in a life narrative that often informs the work but steers us away from the original.

Real Dictators podcast - This is my go to 'easy' listening podcast, particularly when really ill I can just leave it on in the background and absorb.

Charity shops... the ultimate form of social progression. In London charity shops are a mecca for the undiscerning buyer.

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Erin Somers discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Erin Somers is a reporter and news editor at Publishers Lunch. Her first novel, Stay Up with Hugo Best was a Vogue Best Book of the Year in 2019. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Paris Review, New York Times Book Review, New Republic, New York Magazine, Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, Best American Short Stories and many other publications. She has been the recipient of an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the NYC Centre for Fiction, a fellowship from the Millay Colony, and was a 2020 finalist for a National Magazine Award. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her family. Her new novel is The Ten Year Affair, which is available at https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-ten-year-affair-erin-somers/7940888?ean=9781837264568&next=t.

The record Entrance Music by Okonski https://okonski.bandcamp.com/album/entrance-music

The author Max Apple https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/books/review/Hodgman-t.html

The film 101 Reykjavik https://www.theguardian.com/film/News_Story/Critic_Review/Observer_review/0,,501343,00.html

This recording of October in the Railroad Earth by Jack Kerouac and Stephen Allen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hjPZpaXNsw

The Codex Seriphinianus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus

Colony Pizza in Fairfield County, Connecticut https://colonygrill.com/

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