The Ironist
Differing Perspectives
Polite Revolutions: A Gentleman in Moscow and the Comforts of Confinement
First a bestseller and now a prestige television series, A Gentleman in Moscow invites us to believe that grace and civility might yet survive the twentieth century’s great undoing. Picture Credits: Amazon Some months ago, I read A Gentleman in Moscow during a...
Guardians Before God: The Sumerian Origins of Angels
Dr Hara's research on the winged messengers of Western faith starts with these wingless creatures guarding Sumerian doorways. This is the story of angels and how they learned to fly... When we think of angels, we conjure images refined by centuries of Christian art:...
RAMBLINGS #10 – Goodbye Mt. Parnassos, Hello War
A drive down from myth-haunted Mt. Parnassus into the passes, graveyards, and battlefields Picture Credits: Edward Dodwell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons It is said that Zeus, the great philanderer, lay with Mnemosyne (Memory), a Titan, for a marathon...
Inspiration
This is the second essay by Peter on the intricacies of the English language. Here, he writes on where inspiration comes from, and why no amount of effort can quite summon it. My first piece in the English language series talked about the quality of writing that...
The Last Puritan
Alexander Montgomery writes a fleeting, intimate glimpse of Glenn Gould, the genius and the strange solitude of his greatness. Glenn Gould’s sitting in Fran’s Deli, St. Clair East, and I sit here, watching him from the pub across the street. There he is, the bastard,...
The Awkward One: Rediscovering Mary Bennett
About the most forgettable Bennet sister and a retelling of Pride and Prejudice... “There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the...
The Little Tanagra: Part 2
Previously in Part 1, Hara writes about young Arsinoe growing into a woman of remarkable talents at the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron. But longing for freedom, she begins to plan her escape. Arsinoe took longer each day to return from her...
The Little Tanagra: Part 1
We are delighted to introduce a new serialized work of literary fiction from Dr. Hara Papatheodorou: a fairy tale that reimagines the origins of the celebrated Tanagra figurines in ancient Greece. In the small village of Tanagra, in Boeotia, there lived a poor...
WORDS, WORDS, WORDS…
Starting in April 2026, The Ironist is starting a running monthly series of articles on the English language written by our very own contributor Peter Scotchmer, a retired English teacher. Polonius: ‘What is the matter you read, my lord?’ Hamlet: ‘Words, words,...