Unsurprising: one of my lecturers in Venice (in Mod Languages) said that colleagues in Italian Lit argued that non-white people could not understand Dante. Having said that, in school we were at least told that a Medieval Andalusian/North African tradition existed; we didn’t study it, though.

Exactly. Friends working in creative tech industries say that right wing parties have invested massively in social media comms, starting long before their left-wing counterparts. The effects are ofc visible everywhere, and make Mamdani’s win, or the Palestine discourse, even more impressive.

And, say what you like about Gen-Z and their relationship to media and technology, but TikTok videos and savvy social media use by activists (eg Thunberg) played a huge role in educating the young across the world. Politicians like Clinton, Biden, Starmer et al are completely out of touch on this.

I completely agree re people consuming music passively, but Starmer apparently was in the same class as Fatboi Slim, and played the flute for years? So yes, it’s a shame about his not translating his experience and personal connection to music into policy more.

I was literally thinking this last Sunday, as I listened to Starmer being interviewed on R3, saying how much music has always meant to him incl at times of personal grief. I suppose as PM he has some agency in championing equal access to and career chances in the arts for the general population?

Indeed, and of course just after the fall of the Soviet Union, during the Yeltsin years. Given Putin’s neo-imperial tendencies, it would be interesting to know how Russian culture responded to such representations then, and how it does now. I know next to nothing about it alas.

That framing saw a revamp in the 1990s-early 2000s via Dreamworks’ Anastasia, the Dan Brown-type thrillers on conspiracies of the lost treasures/birthrights of the Romanovs, up to inter-imperial nostalgia in Downton Abbey episodes which, coming at the end of the Cold War, I find interesting.

Congratulations, Noreen!!