Delectus Books

🔸 Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) was a notorious superhero (or antihero) and swordsman of the Victorian era. While at Trinity, the half-Irish Burton challenged another student to a duel for mocking his moustache. Burton learned 29 languages and became proficient in fencing. During an expedition to Africa, he was impaled with a native spear, the point entering one cheek and exiting the other, and leaving a scar that can be seen in this photo. He was forced to make his escape with the weapon still stuck through his face. Along with participating in clandestine operations, Burton was renowned for his fighting skills and earned the nickname "Ruffian Dick" because he had "fought in single combat more enemies than perhaps any other man of his time." Burton authored a number of important texts on the sword (including Sword & Bayonet Exercises, a classic book on the history of the Sword, and his "Sentiment of the Sword" about fencing) and translated a number of important Eastern cultural and mythological texts. A scholar, spy, and world explorer, he also had an interest in the occult, native sexual practices, drugs, runes, snake charming, was initiated into an esoteric Sufi brotherhood, as well as into a Hindu sect, all of which made him a subject of controversy and fascination in his time. A linguist, he reportedly learned to identify up to 60 monkey "words," which he recorded in a "monkey vocabulary." In 1886, Queen Victoria made him Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George.

“This beautifully crafted account of Foucault’s political activities in Brazil in the 1970s is a tour de force.” - Lynne Huffer, author of Mad for Foucault

Foucault in Brazil explores the production of the public antagonism between the philosopher and the dictatorship through a meticulous consideration of each of his visits to Brazil. Marcelo Hoffman connects history, philosophy, and political theory to open new ways of thinking about Foucault as a person and thinker and about Brazil and authoritarianism.

Foucault in Brazil: Dictatorship, Resistance, and Solidarity by Marcelo Hoffman is available now!

George Grosz (German 1893-1959) "Deutsches Lied & Deutscher Wein" (German Song & German Wine), date unknown. Grosz was known for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s; Grosz was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada & New Objectivity group during the Weimar Republic

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982), often referred to by his initials PKD, was an American science fiction writer and novelist. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. His fiction explored varied philosophical and social questions such as the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity, and commonly featured characters struggling against elements such as alternate realities, illusory environments, monopolistic corporations, drug abuse, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness. He is considered one of the most important figures in 20th-century science fiction...
Dick's stories typically focus on the fragile nature of what is real and the construction of personal identity. His stories often become surreal fantasies, as the main characters slowly discover that their everyday world is actually an illusion assembled by powerful external entities, such as the suspended animation in Ubik, vast political conspiracies or the vicissitudes of an unreliable narrator. "All of his work starts with the basic assumption that there cannot be one, single, objective reality", writes science fiction author Charles Platt. "Everything is a matter of perception. The ground is liable to shift under your feet. A protagonist may find himself living out another person's dream, or he may enter a drug-induced state that actually makes better sense than the real world, or he may cross into a different universe completely."
Alternate universes and simulacra are common plot devices, with fictional worlds inhabited by common, working people, rather than galactic elites. "There are no heroes in Dick's books", Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, "but there are heroics. One is reminded of Dickens: what counts is the honesty, constancy, kindness and patience of ordinary people."[64] Dick made no secret that much of his thinking and work was heavily influenced by the writings of Carl Jung. The Jungian constructs and models that most concerned Dick seem to be the archetypes of the collective unconscious, group projection/hallucination, synchronicities, and personality theory. Many of Dick's protagonists overtly analyze reality and their perceptions in Jungian terms.

Edna O'Brien

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Vitrage Frank Lloyd Wright

ANNOUNCEMENT! We are delighted to announce we have been awarded grant funding of £250,000 toward the internal restoration of Boleskine House from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

We would like to thank everyone involved in the project, both locally and online, for your support these last few years. We have taken a building many thought impossible to save and have shown that we can together transform At Risk buildings in Scotland. We would also like to thank National Lottery players, who make these grants possible for us and for others.

The funding will pay a key part in helping us to complete the internal rebuild, which we hope to commence in September, and which will run for an anticipated 55 week period through to completion.

Further announcements will be made shortly as regards public access and ways we will be celebrating this partnership to with NLHF!

Death Leading Hells Army - Unknown English Artist, c.1800.

Jacques Tati, 1958