The Quantum of Light

Articles

Lisa F. Crites holding her memoir Beautifully Unbroken

Beautifully Unbroken Review: The Shower Shirt Inventor's Breast Cancer Memoir Begins with the Loss of Her Mother

Dr Marina Nani··1 min read

The medical journalist who patented The Shower Shirt after her own mastectomy tells the story behind it, and the story of the mother she lost two weeks after her wedding, in a memoir that will be of most use to a woman with surgery ahead of her.

Venice Film Festival

George Clooney at Venice Film Festival 2026 warning on authoritarians who silence journalists and storytellers first

Dr Marina Nani··1 min read

Collecting the festival's top career honour at 65, Clooney told reporters that deepfakes let people dismiss real evidence as fake, then used his acceptance speech to say authoritarians silence journalists and artists first.

Old paper with cursive writing on a vintage desk, capturing a timeless historical essence.

Shakespeare's First Folio Found in Saint-Omer

Dr Marina Nani··1 min read

The story of the Saint-Omer copy of Shakespeare's First Folio, catalogued for two centuries as a worthless eighteenth-century reprint before a librarian looked twice.

Explore the intricate and historic interior of Oxford Union Library, a renowned literary hub in England.

Books Preserve a Civilization's Literary and Artistic Heritage

Dr Marina Nani··1 min read

We reflect on how books preserve literary and artistic heritage. The identity a civilisation carries forward each time it keeps a book alive from one generation to the next.

Coat of many colors

The Book Lady: How Dolly Parton's Imagination Library Gifted 332 Million Books

Dr Marina Nani··1 min read

Celebrating Dolly Parton's literacy legacy, the Imagination Library she built for her father, who never learned to read.

Great and Unfortunate Things: The Memoir Jason Arday Leaves Behind

Great and Unfortunate Things: The Memoir Jason Arday Leaves Behind

Dr Marina Nani··1 min read

What Jason Arday's memoir Great and Unfortunate Things tells, and how critics have received it, following his death days after its US publication.

Close-up of reading glasses resting on a stack of newspapers, symbolizing knowledge and study.

Jason Arday, Cambridge's Youngest Black Professor, Dies Days at 41 After His Memoir is Published

Dr Marina Nani··1 min read

Jason Arday resigned from Cambridge on 5 August amid allegations of academic misconduct he denied. His memoir was published three days before he was found dead at his London home, prompting tribute from colleagues and renewed debate over how certain media reporting against him, not about him, were conducting toxic journalism.

A framed and signed black and white portrait of Ringo Starr by photographer Andy Gotts, raising a peace sign beside his face, hung as an editioned exhibition print.

A Music Photographer Is Hanging His Marked-Up Contact Sheets Next to the Finished Prints

Dr Marina Nani··1 min read

Andy Gotts brings forty portraits to Santa Barbara for his first California show, and six of them carry the sitter’s signature as well as his own.

Lisa F. Crites holding her memoir Beautifully Unbroken

Lisa F. Crites Turns Her Own Cancer Recovery Into a Patented Invention and a New Memoir, Beautifully Unbroken

Dr Marina Nani··1 min read

The medical journalist behind The Shower Shirt™, the first patented water-resistant garment for chest surgery patients, tells how the sudden loss of her mother, a breast cancer diagnosis, and a book deal she turned down twice became an Amazon Best Seller, with proceeds pledged to breast cancer support groups.

Interior view of the iconic Rose Main Reading Room, New York Public Library.

Destroying Books Is a Cultural Crime. Project Panama Destroyed Millions of Books with No Legal Consequence

Dr Marina Nani··1 min read

Anthropic bought millions of books, cut them apart and pulped them after scanning. No court called it a crime. Destroying books is a cultural crime and no ruling changes that.

In Conversation with Francis Fukuyama

In Conversation With Francis Fukuyama on the Last Man He Once Declared Triumphant

Dr Marina Nani··1 min read

In 1989, a young political scientist announced that history itself had reached its destination. On 2 September, at the London School of Economics, Francis Fukuyama returns to ask what he got right, what he got wrong and what thirty-seven years have done to that argument. He discusses his new memoir In the Realm of the Last Man at the London School of Economics on 2 September 2026. Here is what to expect.

Illustration of a young woman reading on her phone while sitting among stacks of books and cushions

A Social Reading App Now Has Five Million Members, and Most of Them Are Women Under 40

Dr Marina Nani··1 min read

The company's own figures, and a survey of its own users, are the case it is making against the idea that young people have given up on books.