“America can hardly understand that show—and it’s about us.” — David Simon

The American television drama is undergoing something of a Renaissance these days, and HBO’s under-watched but much-lauded show The Wire is its crowning achievement. Though at first it seems only a cop show, it soon unfolds to become a sprawling epic and a lament on the decline of a city. Could any contemporary British drama be praised with such a description? [Read more →]

What exactly is nationality? Is it more a matter of culture or of genetics, or a complex interplay of both? It is surely true that most nationalities in the world can be identified genetically. But is an Englishman an Englishman or a German a German merely by virtue of their genes, however identifiable they may be? If that is the case, then we would have to make a massive exception for the obvious case of the United States, a nation which was in many respects founded upon cultural and genetic diversity, and maintains that diversity to this day. [Read more →]