Francesca Beddie

Gloria Davies quotes William Blake in the acknowledgments to her book: ‘true friendship is argument.’ When choosing that quote, I wonder if she had the Chinese concept of zhengyou in mind. That is the word Kevin Rudd chose for friendship when he spoke to the students at Peking University in April this year. Zhengyou is not just about friendship, for which there is another Chinese word (youyi); ... (read more)

The author of The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria, has a reputation that suggests the prototype for the twenty-first century Renaissance man. Zakaria was born in India, with Muslim roots but a secular upbringing. He was educated at a Christian school, then at Yale and Harvard. He studied international relations with two luminaries in the field, Samuel P. Huntington and Stanley Hoffmann. Add to ... (read more)