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Irish Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
British-Irish Relations in the Twenty-First Century: A strong examination of the Belfast Agreement's legacy and the impact of Brexit
British-Irish Relations in the Twenty-First Century, The Good Friday Agreement, Brexit and the Totality of Relations Author : Etain Tannam ISBN-13 : 978-0198807988 Publisher : Oxford University Press Guideline Price : £99 The Belfast Agreement of 1998 between the British and Irish governments and political parties in Northern Ireland has brought peace to the island and is now a settled part of Ireland's political architecture. Yet this extraordinary achievement failed to reconcile ethno-political identities in the North or stabilise government there. That is mainly because its imaginative three-stranded approach, inspired by John Hume and encompassing shared governing in Northern Ireland, North-South co-operation and institutionalised relations between Ireland and the United Kingdom, has been neglected and underused by these governments and parties. That is the thrust of this meticulous, closely-argued study of the agreement and its subsequent evolution. It first examines the content, differing interpretations and major criticisms of the agreement, showing clearly how the various players had contrasting motivations in reaching it. The two governments prioritised peace and stability, the unionists wanted to lock Northern Ireland into the UK, while nationalists and republicans saw a peaceful path to Irish unity. Critics say its consociational powersharing structure locks in sectarianism while its multiple veto points inhibit emergent political change. The Brexit shock plus political and demographic change put a potentially united Ireland on the agenda Subsequent chapters examine how Brexit's resurrection of state sovereignty from 2016 undermined the agreement's powersharing dimensions all round, dramatising these conflicting interpretations. The European element of the agreement was understated yet essential to its functioning. That showed up in North-South and East-West terms – Strands 2 and 3 of the agreement – as the book goes on to demonstrate. British-Irish relations reached their lowest ebb during negotiation of the EU withdrawal deal and the Northern Ireland Protocol with the Conservatives. They are now being ambitiously repaired with the new Labour government. The book argues strongly and persuasively that Hume's three-stranded vision should continue to inspire North-South and East-West relations and that the institutional architecture agreed in 1998 has been underused. Taoiseach Micheál Martin's Shared Island initiative and the current Dublin-London reset are happening more alongside than through the North South Ministerial Council and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Council. Such institutions suit the smaller state. Tannam shows how political disagreements and pragmatic diplomacy have undermined that insight. This matters because the Brexit shock plus political and demographic change put a potentially united Ireland on the agenda. If that happens the agreement's minority guarantees and institutions would still be available – and required.
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
The Colonialist: Gruelling but impressive portrait of the virulent racist who bankrolled Parnell
The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes Author : William Kelleher Storey ISBN-13 : 978-0199811359 Publisher : Oxford University Press Guideline Price : £30.99 Cecil Rhodes never got around to visiting Ireland . The Englishman, whose name has become a byword for British imperialism, however, was also an enthusiastic supporter of Irish Home Rule. In 1888 the Africa-based mining magnate met Charles Stewart Parnell , was greatly impressed and sent him a donation of £10,000 (worth almost €1 million today). The money came with just one condition – Parnell had to alter his Home Rule policy so that some Irish MPs would remain at Westminster even after a parliament was established in Dublin. As William Kelleher Storey points out in this sober, heavyweight and quietly damning biography, Rhodes's generosity towards Ireland was not so surprising as it might first appear. Along with painting the world map red, he dreamed of creating a giant federal parliament in London with representation from every British colony. Ireland should be 'a stalking horse', he wrote to Parnell, and 'the stepping-stone to that federation, which is the condition of the continued existence of our empire'. Explaining this vision is a key theme of Storey's book, the first womb-to-tomb Rhodes biography for almost 40 years. During that time its subject has been increasingly denounced as a greedy plunderer, a white supremacist and an architect of South African apartheid. The international Rhodes Must Fall movement is still campaigning to topple statues of him at university campuses he once helped fund. While The Colonialist is anything but a whitewash, it does not shy away from an inconvenient truth. In Rhodes's own twisted way, he was also an idealist – and Storey argues vigorously that his record must be contextualised as well as condemned. If Rhodes was your specialist subject on Mastermind, this book would supply the answer to every conceivable question. In painstakingly researched detail, it recounts how the sickly son of a Hertfordshire vicar was sent out to his brother's Natalian cotton farm, built the De Beers diamond company into a massively profitable monopoly and wound up as prime minister of the Cape Colony. It chronicles his lifelong quest to unite southern Africa's four colonies into one self-governing state, spreading white settlements while exploiting the region's natural resources. A history professor at Millsaps College in Mississippi, Storey has a keen eye for anecdotes that illustrate Rhodes's distinctly odd personality. Young Cecil's nanny sometimes found the boy hidden away and moaning pitifully, unable to tell her why. Even after becoming fantastically wealthy, he valued power over possessions and usually dressed in rough workingman's clothes. He seems to have had a self-destructive streak, regularly consuming large amounts of rich food, cigars and alcohol, including a champagne and Guinness cocktail at lunchtime. 'I hear you are a woman hater,' Queen Victoria remarked to him over dinner, presumably because he never showed any interest in them. He gallantly replied: 'How could I dislike a sex to which your majesty belongs?' While Rhodes was not without charm or charisma, Storey accuses him of being far more devious than his upright image suggested. In one notorious episode, he effectively tricked the illiterate King Lobengula into signing a document that gave away gold mining rights across Matabeleland and other territories. When talking failed, Rhodes turned to guns and sanctioned a raid on the Transvaal's Boer republic that he hoped would spark a British uprising in 1895. Its failure permanently dented his reputation and he died just over six years later, aged 48. Above all, Storey leaves readers in no doubt that Rhodes was a virulent racist even by 19th-century standards. 'The natives are children … just emerging from barbarism,' he declared in a parliamentary speech described by the author as 'dripping with dismissive contempt'. He systematically deprived black people of land, finance and voting rights, telling a police officer during a rebellion: 'You should kill all you can … it serves a lesson to them when they talk things over their fires at night.' Rhodes has already inspired more than two dozen biographies, but Storey claims to go further than any of them by exploring his impact on southern Africa's physical landscape. There are many self-contained sections about how he changed its agriculture, railways, telecommunications, urban development and diamond production. Some of this is not for the squeamish, particularly an account of the grisly methods used by mine bosses to make sure workers were not smuggling precious stones in their bodies. It all adds up to a rich and panoramic narrative, so wide-ranging that The Life and Times of Cecil Rhodes might have been a better title. Charles Stewart Parnell predicted that the man who was bankrolling his party 'would not live in history'. On this, at least, the 'uncrowned king of Ireland' was dead wrong. 'It will be much easier to remove a few statues than to reverse the legacy of Cecil Rhodes,' Storey warns at the conclusion of his often gruelling but always impressive portrait. 'Understanding what he did is a first step to freedom.'
Indian Express
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
The Harvard-educated linguist breaking down ‘skibidi' and ‘rizz'
Adam Aleksic has been thinking about seggs. Not sex, but seggs — a substitute term that took off a few years ago among those trying to dodge content-moderation restrictions on TikTok. Influencers shared stories from their 'seggs lives' and spoke about the importance of 'seggs education.' Lots of similarly inventive workarounds have emerged to discuss sensitive or suggestive topics online. This phenomenon is called algospeak, and it has yielded terms like 'cornucopia' for homophobia and 'unalive,' a euphemism for suicide that has made its way into middle schoolers' offline vocabulary. These words roll off the tongue for Aleksic, a 24-year-old linguist and content creator who posts as Etymology Nerd on social media. Others may find them slightly bewildering. But, as he argues in a new book, 'Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language,' these distinctly 21st-century coinages are worthy of consideration by anyone interested in the forces that mold our shifting lexicon. 'The more I looked into it, the more I realized that algorithms are really affecting every aspect of modern language change,' Aleksic said in a recent interview, padding around the Manhattan apartment he shares with a roommate and wearing socks stitched with tiny dolphins. Even those who steer clear of social media are not exempt. If you have encountered Oxford University Press's 2024 word of the year, 'brain rot' (the 'supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state,' thanks to a firehose of digital content), you, too, have had a brush with social media's ability to incubate slang and catapult it into the offline world. Aleksic has been dissecting slang associated with Gen Z on social media since 2023. In wobbly, breathless videos that are usually about a minute long, he uses his undergraduate degree in linguistics from Harvard University to explain the spread of terms including 'lowkey' and 'gyat.' (If you must know, the latter is a synonym for butt.) The videos are more rigorous than their informal quality might suggest. Each one takes four or five hours to compose, he said. He scripts every word, and combs Google Scholar for relevant papers from academic journals that he can cite in screenshots. He appears to be fashioning himself as Bill Nye for Gen Z language enthusiasts. In the process, he has become a go-to voice for journalists and anyone older than 30 who might want to understand why 'Skibidi Toilet,' the nonsensical name of a YouTube series, has wormed its way into Gen Alpha's vocabulary. What he wants now is to be taken seriously outside of those circles. 'I want to balance being a 'ha-ha funny' TikToker with academic credibility,' he said. 'It's a little hard to strike that balance when you are talking about 'Skibidi Toilet' on the internet.' Aleksic settled in his living room, under the apparent surveillance of several stick-on googly eyes left over from his most recent birthday party. To the left of the entrance was a makeshift ball pit filled with orbs that resembled enormous plastic Dippin' Dots. (He installed it as a bit, but has come to appreciate its ability to foster conversation.) In person, he is animated but not frenetic, a click or three less intense than he appears in his videos. He is happy to lean into the persona of a fast-talking know-it-all if it means engaging people who wouldn't otherwise spare a thought for etymology. He started speeding up his cadence when he realized that brisk videos tended to get more views. 'I'll retake a video if I don't think I spoke fast enough,' he said. Just as Aleksic changed the way he spoke in response to algorithmic pressure, language, too, can be bent by users seeking an audience on social media. Take 'rizz,' which means something along the lines of 'charisma.' According to Aleksic, the word was popularized by Twitch streamer Kai Cenat, whose young fans picked up the term. So did the robust ecosystem of people online who make fun of Cenat's every move. Soon, the word had been flagged by TikTok's recommendation algorithm as a trending topic that it could highlight to keep viewers engaged. Influencers — including Aleksic — who wanted their posts to be pushed to more viewers now had an incentive to join in. This process slingshots trendy coinages into the broader consciousness. But it also yanks terms from their original context faster than ever before, he said. Words with origins in African American English or ballroom culture, for instance, are often mislabeled as 'Gen Z slang' or 'internet slang.' Aleksic tackles that well-documented phenomenon in a chapter titled 'It's Giving Appropriation.' Other sections of the book, which was released by Knopf this month, spend time with subcultures that play an outsize role in modern language generation, including K-pop fans, who boosted the term 'delulu,' and incels, or involuntary celibates, who popularized the term 'sigma.' Words have always traveled from insular communities into wider usage: Aleksic likes the example of 'OK,' which was Boston newspaper slang in the 19th century that spread with the help of Martin Van Buren's reelection campaign. (His nickname in full, 'Old Kinderhook,' was a bit of a mouthful.) But 'delulu' and 'rizz' didn't need the eighth president's help to travel across the country — they had the internet. And TikTok's powerful algorithm is more efficient at getting the word out than Old Kinderhook's most overachieving press secretary. Today, the cycle of word generation has been turbocharged to the point that some of its output hardly makes sense. Nowhere is that more evident than in a chapter titled 'Sticking Out Your Gyat for the Rizzler,' a chaotic mélange of slang that is hilarious to middle schoolers precisely because it is so illegible to adults. Words and phrases don't need to be understood to go viral — they just have to be funny enough to retain our attention. Aleksic argues that 'algospeak' is no longer as simple as swapping sex for 'seggs'; it is a linguistic ecosystem in which words rocket from the margins to the mainstream in a matter of days, and sometimes fade just as fast. When influencers modify their vocabulary and speech patterns for maximum visibility, those patterns are reinforced among their audiences. Aleksic said he works hard to keep viewers' attention, for example, jumping between camera angles roughly every 8 seconds. He longed for a forum in which he could discuss his ideas at length, and last January, he began refining an idea for a book about algorithms and language. That's an ambitious goal for a recent college graduate without an advanced degree or decades of research experience, the kinds of qualifications that abound in the linguistics publishing crowd. But youth has its upsides when it comes to the world of internet slang, said Gretchen McCulloch, the author of 'Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language.' 'The tricky thing with internet linguistics is that the point at which you're the most qualified to speak about it from personal experience is also the point at which you have the least, sort of, academic credibility,' McCulloch said in an interview. She, too, is fascinated by how short-form video is affecting language, though she wonders which changes will be permanent and which will fade with time. Take the way that influencers often begin their videos with superlatives like 'The most interesting thing about …' Will those hyperbolic phrases bleed into other forms of communication, or will they lose their potency with overuse? There is a whole graveyard full of internet-speak — 'on fleek,' you will be missed — that has fallen out of fashion. While Aleksic wades through these big questions, he is also making time for really small ones. He is hoping to make a video about urinal conversations, which have been the subject of more academic papers than you might think. While we spoke, he pulled up his email inbox to scan through the questions that had come in from his followers. (He gets about 10 a day.) 'Somebody emailed me about the word 'thank' versus 'thanks,'' he said, scrolling through a message. 'You know, that's kind of interesting.'
Indian Express
6 days ago
- General
- Indian Express
150 years later, Jim Corbett's jungle books still roar
Jim Corbett was a colonial hunter who famously tracked elusive man-eating tigers and leopards across the Himalayan foothills in the early 20th century. However, his name survives in India to this day, not because of the fearsome beasts he hunted, but because of what he wrote. Between 1944 and 1955, Corbett published six books that transformed his adventures in the dense Indian jungles into literary legend. Man-Eaters of Kumaon, the first and most influential of these, remains one of the best-selling and most widely read wilderness books written about India. His works have been translated into over two dozen languages, remain in circulation across generations, and continue to influence how naturalists, tourists, and general readers perceive forests and the animals within them. Corbett was neither a trained scientist nor a professional author, yet his writing established a blueprint for modern Indian nature writing: clear, observational, rooted in the field, and deeply concerned with the relationship between people and predators. The opening story in Man-Eaters of Kumaon recounts Corbett's 1907 encounter with the Champawat Tigress, officially blamed for 436 human deaths in Nepal and India. After years of failed attempts by others, Corbett tracked and killed the tigress in a village in Kumaon. What is striking in his account is not the act itself, but the method. Corbett documents how the tigress moved, where she attacked, and how she evaded pursuit. He emphasised the fear in the community, describing villagers abandoning homes, refusing to step outside, or sending children away for safety. This clinical, community-focused narrative distinguished Corbett from other colonial-era shikaris, who often glorified the hunt and ignored its human context. In Corbett's writing, it was the villagers, not the hunter, who were the story. 'I am not going to harrow your feelings by trying to describe that poor torn and mangled thing,' he wrote of one victim in The Temple Tiger, 'still with every bone whole and atom of dignity… yet the cry of blood for blood, to rid a countryside of a menace… is irresistible.' Man-Eaters of Kumaon became a global bestseller upon its release by Oxford University Press in 1944. Corbett followed it with The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag (1948), a tightly focused account of a leopard that killed 125 people across eight years. This book, more restrained and procedural than the first, reinforced Corbett's emerging literary identity: more investigator than adventurer. Corbett insisted that man-eating was abnormal behavior, the result of injury, age, or human interference, and not innate to tigers or leopards. 'It is only the stress of circumstances beyond its control that compels a tiger or leopard to adopt a diet alien to it,' he wrote in Man-Eaters of Kumaon This argument, grounded in field observation rather than theory, was decades ahead of formal conservation discourse. In his later books, Corbett moved away from the act of hunting and toward reflection. My India (1952) is a set of essays on rural life in the United Provinces (now Uttarakhand), focusing on caste, poverty, and survival rather than wildlife. Jungle Lore (1953) is a memoir of sorts — a narrative of how he learned to live with, and read, the jungle. In these works, Corbett begins to articulate a conservation ethic. He expresses regret about the decline of big cats, criticises trophy hunting, and advocates for photography as a humane alternative. His language becomes more introspective, less goal-driven. 'The taking of a good photograph gives far more pleasure to the sportsman than the acquisition of a trophy,' he wrote, adding, 'while the photograph is of interest to all lovers of wildlife, the trophy is only of interest to the individual who acquired it.' The Temple Tiger and More Man-Eaters of Kumaon (1954) includes hunts that end without a kill, a deliberate narrative choice that underscores his growing discomfort with his role as executioner. 'To take an uncertain shot at night with the possibility of only wounding him and leaving him to suffer… was not justifiable in any circumstances,' Corbett said of one non-lethal encounter in the Man-Eaters of Kumaon. His final book, Tree Tops (1955), written after he relocated to Kenya, is a slim account of a royal visit, mostly remembered for noting Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the throne. Corbett's books outlasted both the empire that shaped his life and the big-game tradition he once represented. They remain widely circulated in India, especially among wildlife enthusiasts, naturalists, and readers interested in ecological history. Translations in Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, and several other Indian languages have kept his work accessible to readers beyond the English-speaking elite. Though his writings are no longer part of formal school syllabi, they continue to appear in curated reading lists, public libraries, and conservation workshops. In popular culture, his stories are retold by tour guides, referenced in documentaries, and dramatised in podcasts and short films. The forest that bears his name — Jim Corbett National Park, renamed in 1957 — remains one of India's best-known wildlife destinations. As he warned in the Man-Eaters of Kumaon: 'A tiger is a large-hearted gentleman with boundless courage and… when he is exterminated… India will be the poorer, having lost the finest of her fauna' Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics. She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks. She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year. She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home. Write to her at or You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More
Leader Live
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Leader Live
Countdown's Susie Dent is coming to Wrexham - here's when
She is bringing her new tour 'Word Perfect' to Wrexham's William Aston Hall on August 23. For someone whose life revolves around a true love of the English language and who is razor-sharp at deciphering the whimsies of our mother tongue, Susie Dent doesn't seem like the sort of person to be tripped up by the simple things. But she admits she has been stumped, albeit on the rare occasion. Countdown co-presenter and Queen of Dictionary Corner for more than 30 years, Susie – who will hit the road with her all-new second 26-date tour Word Perfect this summer – has many fond memories of her time on the show and recalls one particularly amusing moment. She said: 'I was doing some work on the tour the other day, and I was reminiscing about Richard Whiteley, when one of my most embarrassing moments came back to me. 'The letters had been selected, the clock had ticked down, and a contestant offered their five-letter word. I didn't quite catch what they said, so I asked them to spell it, which they duly did: D. O. I. N. G. In my head this translated to 'doi-ng' to rhyme with 'boing', so I proceeded to look it up. Until Richard saved my bacon by chipping in with 'It's do-ing Susie'.' Susie turned down the offer to join the team of Oxford University Press lexicographers who took turns in Dictionary Corner three times, but a persistent boss wouldn't let it lie. She said: 'It wasn't on my bucket list to be on TV; I'm happiest when I'm below the radar! But now I'm so grateful my audition was successful. As for my first appearance, I said as little as possible! There is a clip online of that first show, when I sat next to Rula Lenska and looked utterly frozen. 'I will be forever amazed, and grateful, that they kept me on. After about 10 years, Richard and Carol wanted a full-time lexicographer within the team, and happily I ended up alongside them as a permanent fixture.' But for someone who had no inclination to appear on TV, Susie has a very clear place in her heart for the Channel 4 tea-time words and numbers quiz and its Friday-night naughtier sibling 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown. She said: '8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown has reminded many of those people who grew up with the show of the joy of the game, and of course it's brought in the laughs to go with it. TOP STORIES TODAY 'The real beauty of Countdown is its format. Anybody who watches it can understand the rules of the game within minutes and then join in to play along – no matter what their age or ability. Even with the comedy version, people do still love to play the game. 'Many of our contestants watched the show with their parents and grandparents, and so it has that real connection with family, too. 'After 33 years I still feel the adrenaline as the clock starts to tick down. It really is one of the biggest joys of my life. My feet will stay under the table in Dictionary Corner for as long as viewers will have me!' In her new tour Word Perfect, she is looking forward to taking audiences on a 'romp through some of the joys of the English language', looking at specific words and their stories, as well as many of the quirks which make our mother tongue so brilliantly unpredictable as well as magical. Speaking about her new tour, Susie said: 'The English language will never stop surprising and delighting me: It is as wayward as it is majestic, while the dictionary is as full of magic, drama and adventure as you will find anywhere. 'I can't wait to walk down some more of its secret alleyways with the Word Perfect audiences, and to hear their own questions about our curious mother tongue! We're going to have a lot of fun. Susie's tour, which will run from August 19 through until January 24, will coincide with the launch of her next two books, Words For Life and her children's book Roots We Share: 100 Words That Bring Us Together.
