The Lobotomizing Of Eva Perón (This Is Not A Metaphor)

Argentina’s most famous First Lady died of cervical cancer in July 1952, slightly less than a year after she was diagnosed. A researcher has found that, several weeks before her death, she was given a lobotomy, almost certainly without her consent. The ostensible reason was to alleviate her severe pain; just as likely, it was to stop the increasingly dangerous political activity she conducted from her sickbed. – Mental Floss

How Prison Shaped Writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

The Kenyan writer, a perennial frontrunner for the Nobel Prize for Literature, saw the committee pass him over once again. But his time in prison in Kenya changed his life. “How come that a post-colonial African government has put me in prison for writing in an African language? … I had written a few plays in English, and novels in English, and I had not been in prison for being critical of the post-colonial system. So why now? And that question is what set in motion my thinking about the unequal and unequal relationship of power between languages. That thinking made me say no — from now onwards, I’ll be writing in my mother tongue.” – NPR

When Britain’s Music Magazine Q Closed, A Songwriter Got In One Last Act Of Kindness

The iconic magazine fell prey to the coronavirus in July, but songwriter Paul Heaton (somewhat unlike Britain’s current government, according to recent reports) didn’t want the staff to be “left on their arse.” So he gave a large donation that the final editor shared with 40 staffers and freelancers alike. – The Guardian (UK)

How We Know Who Was Reading What In Medieval Times

Early medieval libraries lent books often and lending books for copying was, in fact, seen as an act of Christian charity. The books were borrowed not only by other monasteries but also by local priests and lay people. The list kept by the meticulous monks of Wissembourg was perhaps maintained until the middle of the tenth century. It is a living list. – History Today

Duncan Grant’s Recently Rediscovered Erotic Art Is ‘A Blast Of Joy’ In Tough Times For The Arts

“What images they are: defiantly subversive and explicit multiracial homoerotica, bursting with passion, flesh, joy, love, freedom and everything else gay people were legally barred from experiencing and expressing at the time. The underlying message of Grant’s paintings is still uplifting in 2020: art will always find a way, whatever the obstacles, hardships and dangers.” – The Guardian (UK)

How Ordinary Germans Let Naziism Creep In

“Consumerism boomed in the early years of the Third Reich (and even, for a time, during the war). For all that Nazism was a dictatorship, ordinary non-Jewish Germans felt they had choices they had not had before. As the economy improved, Germans travelled widely, a process supported by Nazi organisations such as Strength Through Joy, which offered a range of affordable holidays. Travel-writing journalism developed as a form. The Nazis made theatre and concerts available to wider audiences.” – History Today