T.H. Barrett

The first act of terrorism against the international community horrific enough to prompt a military alliance to strike against the state supporting the terrorists was arguably the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of missionaries, including their wives and children, and thousands of Chinese converts. The diplomatic community in Peking was besieged until a force composed...

David Selbourne’s City of Light, which purports to publish a Jewish account of China in the 13th century and which my review last year (LRB, 30 October 1997) described as a forgery, has reappeared in paperback. It was strongly championed by Melanie Phillips in the Sunday Times of 18 October. In this piece Phillips takes issue with my review on grounds that I believe to be dubious, although she states...

Brian Rotman’s account of the transmission of the I Ching misses out some quite important information (LRB, 9 February). The problem lies in his repeated use of the word ‘translation’, a process which, according to him, was carried out many times during the history of the I Ching in China itself. In fact, the text of the I Ching has remained unaltered and in exactly the same language for about...