Kester Brewin

Category: Books

  • Trump vs The Prince

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    ‘It is not reasonable that they know how to rule, having always lived as private citizens… the first bad weather kills them.’ Reaching for something to read before bed the other day, I pulled down Machiavelli’s classic book on the dark art of state-craft, The Prince. Chapter VII begins thus: 500 years before Trump, it…

  • From Russia, With Chaos

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    Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been re-reading Peter Pomerantsev’s book Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, each page pushing me towards the same, slightly counterintuitive conclusion: if you want to understand Trump’s America, you need to look to Putin’s Russia. I first read the book when a colleague – a history teacher I’d…

  • Theology and Fiction: Telling Stories of Order Amidst The Chaos

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    I just this week finished John Yorke’s book Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them. It was recommended by a good friend who’s a director in theatre and is also now writing for television. She insisted that I read it before I began any more writing. I’m really glad I did, for…

  • A Theology of Human Machines | Solving the ‘Modest Problem of Death’

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    A fascinating read in the latest New Republic, reviewing Irish writer Mark O’Connor’s new book, To Be A Machine – subtitled ‘Adventures among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers and Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death.’ Anna Wiener writes: O’Connell is less interested in evaluating technology than in the people who make it and its philosophical implications. As he…

  • New Book

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    Delighted to announce that I’ve been awarded a grant from Arts Council England to work on my next book.  Following a 20 page application about artistic quality, and with supporting letters from some senior (and lovely) people in publishing, the award feels like a massive endorsement of the work I’ve done so far. The money…

  • The Only Way to Have a Free Press is to Pay For It

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    One of the things that’s been on my mind in the wake of recent political events is the vital importance to liberal democracy of a genuinely independent and critical free press. It strikes me that if we want a free press, we’re really do need to be willing to pay for it. In Raoul Martinez’s Creating…