During 1957, the novel Doctor Zhivago (the manuscript having earlier been smuggled out of the USSR) was published in the West. Though the author, Boris Pasternak, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year, he was forced by the Soviet Union’s communist government to decline the award. Their outrage and humiliation, a consequence …

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How Clear, How Lovely Brightby A. E. Housman How clear, how lovely bright,How beautiful to sightThose beams of morning play;How heaven laughs out with gleeWhere, like a bird set free,Up from the eastern seaSoars the delightful day. To-day I shall be strong,No more shall yield to wrong,Shall squander life no more;Days lost, I know not …

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