The essay that I have just posted, and which you would have already received in another email – on Albert Camus and democracy – marks 12 months since I posted my first essay in Substack: the first in a 21 part series, slow reading The Plague during COVID, climate change, and various political crises. As initially promised, this newsletter also developed into broader discussions regarding culture and democracy.

It would be very good to be able to continue this newsletter for another 12 months, but for that to be viable I would need to acquire more paid subscriptions.

If you value independent scholarship then please consider updating to a paid subscription. To celebrate this anniversary I want to offer you a 20% discount on the annual subscription, an offer which you can access here:

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Doing so will also unlock from the archive the complete series on The Plague, as well as several sidebar posts.

In legal terms, a sidebar is a discussion that occurs in a law court between the lawyers and the judge held out of earshot of the jury; in journalism, a sidebar is a short article placed alongside a main article, containing additional or explanatory material; but to my mind, a sidebar is also a small bar off from the main bar where a small group can sit over a quiet drink and converse, away from the din of the crowd. These sidebar pieces – for paying subscribers, my judges – are a combination of all three.

These will continue over the next 12 months, along with more regular pieces on culture and democracy. But, yes, there will also be pieces on Albert Camus. It is for this reason that I thought it appropriate to mark this anniversary with a piece on Camus and democracy. But I am already planning, researching, and writing future pieces on the radical misunderstandings of Hannah Arendt, Northrop Frye on reading, Durkheim and Bentham on fiction, and the most important work of political theory you’ve probably never read (and probably couldn’t even guess), and so on.

Next week I’m starting a 2-part series on the Ancient Greek practice of askēsis, just for the shits and giggles.

So if you appreciate reading this newsletter, and you want it to continue, then please consider doing one of two things, or both: update your free subscription to a paid subscription (with a discount, what we here in Australia call ‘mates rates’):

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And please share this newsletter far and wide, to attract more readers, and possibly more paying subscribers, to ensure that it continues.

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Enjoy.