The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE recommends an impressive impersonation of Bob Dylan
‘There is such a thing as ineradicable homosexuality’, Harry Whyte, letter to Stalin, 1934
MATTHEW HAWKINS treads warily through the symphonic history of a subject that our present understanding can only obscure
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Here, Vermiglio, William Tell and Wolf Man
New releases from Thorpe and Morrison, Daria Kulesh, and Will Finn and Rosie Calvert
RINA ARYA confronts the brutal operation of Francis Bacon’s approach to portraiture
Emphasising his continuous engagement in labour movement struggles, ALISTAIR FINDLAY salutes John Foster’s contribution as activist, strategist, intellectual and defender of the Morning Star
ANDY MIAH advocates the use of AI to assist people by expanding access to global literature and culture
EWAN KOTZ relishes a veteran Glasgow band that have lost none of their verve for live performance
Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe, 1400 - 1750
Noel Malcolm
OUP, £25
THE lauded historian Noel Malcolm begins Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe by relating an account of how, in 1558, in the household of the Venetian embassy in Istanbul, two young male pages were repeatedly seen flirting and kissing. Other downstairs workers didn’t actually seem to mind, and some were diverted and amused. Those in charge were concerned enough to document and suppress the blandishment, as they didn’t want the household to be seen as resembling local Muslim equivalents, where convention condoned acts of sodomy – or was this just a smear?
Disquisition follows on a grand symphonic scale and the reader is launched into myriad calibrated thoughts. Why are men so strange? Where does recreation end and denigration begin? Is it illuminating or alienating to peer at carnality through a prism of historical and cultural shifts?
More from this author
MATTHEW HAWKINS is drawn into the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India
MATTHEW HAWKINS admires a writer with the gumption and wit to extend a transformative experience of autism to the reader
MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds two evocative new productions that have premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe before touring nationwide
MATTHEW HAWKINS savours the brilliant dynamism of Brazilian contemporary dance, and Leicester’s own virtuoso of Indian dervishery
Similar stories
JOHN WIGHT writes on The Greatest's solidarity with the people of Palestine
Is the United Nations finally recognising that the sex trade is a form of exploitation and a breach of human rights? LUBA FEIN welcomes a new report which suggests that might be the case
LEO BOIX recommends a refreshing, non-Western and subversive look at what it means to be LGBTQI+ in Morocco
SONYA ANDERMAHR finds a voice worth listening to in the candid account of a trans woman who came to question gender identity politics