Great Lives

How the ‘Flying Finn’ dominated distance running during the 1920s through sheer dogged determination more than natural talent. It’s often the case with the world’s best words that there’s no direct English translation, something certainly true of the Finnish sisu. Indeed, for a concept that lies at the very core of Finnish character and identity […]

Writer, April 17, 1885 – September 7, 1962 In New York in the spring of 1959 Karen Blixen danced on a table with Marilyn Monroe and fellow novelist Carson McCullers. At least, that was according to McCullers’ version of events: while the three certainly met it’s unlikely the frail, sickly Blixen would have been tapping […]

Philosopher, February 3, 1909 – August 24, 1943 When Emmanuel Macron cited Simone Weil in a speech to the French Congress last month most people, including the official government transcriber, assumed he was referring to the feminist lawyer and government minister Simone Veil who had died a few days earlier. Instead Macron, a keen student […]