Monthly Archives: September 2020

The Spy and the Kingdom

More often than not the more well-known spies are the ones notorious for having betrayed the country they ostensibly serve, i.e. double agents, primarily those that betrayed the countries of the ‘free’ world, like Great Britain. While few stones are left unturned to expose these traitors so long after the fact, the counterspies of the Crown lay respectably buried in the historical record. This short note by historian Suchetana Chattopadhyay is about one such anti-Soviet British spy of the in[...]

Will the pandemic enable us to imagine our cities with more bookstores?

How many bookstores does Delhi have? Sadly, no one knows, and it is hard to even hazard a guess. In any case, it would again depend on definition. For example, do you include all the shops that sell school textbooks, or other specialised books such as law books? That number would run into hundreds, if not thousands. Do you include the pavement sellers who spread out their wares in major markets? Again, the number would be in the hundreds or thousands. Do you include shops that sell books by the [...]