Norwich! The great city of Norwich! Its cathedral, its mustard, its football team, its famous sons Lord Nelson and Alan Partridge,1 its union. Yes, its…
CIPC #206: Chess in ‘Popular science’
Nothing is quite as unsettling to a scientist than his subject becoming self aware. Imagine the biologist that suddenly finds his fruit flies peering at…
CIPC #205: Father Brown S2 E1, The ghost in the machine
I have sung the praises of Chesterton’s Father Brown stories before, so I will now just suffice by saying that I still stand by those…
CIPC #204: B.C. June 9th, 2013
Last year, we started with some high-brow Culture with a capital C. As there is a widely supported consensus that 2020 was not one of…
CIPC extra: The best and worst of 2020
Never before have people been so eager for a year to end. All because they cannot wait for my review of the year. I can…
CIPC #203: Asterix Vol.4, Asterix the gladiator
Sic transit gloria mundi! There is no better way to summarise the fate of the Asterix series. It started all the way back in 1959…
CIPC #202: The manhole
2020 has become the year of video games. People have been at home rather more than usual and, naturally, they spend it playing Fortnite, Among…
CIPC #201: De strateeg ad
Our subject for today is a podcast. Well, not quite. It’s some kind of ad that, at the time of writing, appears as the official…
CIPC #200: S. S. Van Dine, Le fou des échecs
This is the third year now that I do this blog. I have touched on movies, television series, paintings, comics, literature, sculptures – pretty much…
CIPC #199: Alice in Wonderland
If you were to ask some random schmuck from the streets to give an example of chess in popular culture, provided you do this at…