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National Book Critics Circle @bookcritics.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

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NBCC member Anna Della Subin reviewed Nora Berend's "El Cid: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Mercenary" for the London Review of Books:

Anna Della Subin · Gallop, Gallop: Right and Left Cids

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, cultivated his own personal army, made up of both Christians and Muslims...

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 10/02/2026

‘El Cid remains: there was always treason within him, in his friendships, his crows, his crossings with the king. He poses the question of what makes power legitimate, and that question will not go away.’ @annadella.bsky.social on the medieval mercenary and ruler. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Anna Della Subin · Gallop, Gallop: Right and Left Cids

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, cultivated his own personal army, made up of both Christians and Muslims...

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 07/02/2026

‘During El Cid’s lifetime there wasn’t yet a fully fledged ideology of a war of faiths – the knight would become the “accidental beneficiary” of the crusader rhetoric that grew more pronounced in the decades after his death.’ @annadella.bsky.social on El CId. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Anna Della Subin · Gallop, Gallop: Right and Left Cids

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, cultivated his own personal army, made up of both Christians and Muslims...

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 08/02/2026

‘During Spain’s literary Siglo de Oro, or Golden Age, El Cid goes burlesque – part saint, part clown – in plays performed to large audiences of all social classes; at least 22 survive from the period.’ @annadella.bsky.social on the medieval mercenary. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Anna Della Subin · Gallop, Gallop: Right and Left Cids

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, cultivated his own personal army, made up of both Christians and Muslims...

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 04/02/2026

‘In the contest with history the myth of El Cid has always come out on top. If you picture him now, you might be visualising Charlton Heston in Anthony Mann’s epic of 1961.’ @annadella.bsky.social on a new account of the mediieval Spanish mercenary. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Anna Della Subin · Gallop, Gallop: Right and Left Cids

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, cultivated his own personal army, made up of both Christians and Muslims...

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 05/02/2026

‘Berend tracks El Cid’s metamorphoses into the present day, lending his shape to chocolate bars, slashing his way through video games and death-metal lyrics, encountering a time-travelling Donald Duck.’ @annadella.bsky.social on a new account of the mediieval mercenary www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Anna Della Subin · Gallop, Gallop: Right and Left Cids

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, cultivated his own personal army, made up of both Christians and Muslims...

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Reposted by Anna Della Subin

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 06/02/2026

‘Even stranger, as a figure embraced by both the far right and the left, El Cid has also come to stand as an emblem of democracy and pluralism.’ @annadella.bsky.social on a new account of the medieval Spanish mercenary. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Anna Della Subin · Gallop, Gallop: Right and Left Cids

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, cultivated his own personal army, made up of both Christians and Muslims...

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 03/02/2026

‘In the 21st century, El Cid’s image has been taken up by Spain’s far-right party Vox, which has rallied beneath his statues. He has become the medieval precursor of supremacist ideologies.’ @annadella.bsky.social on a new account of the knight and mercenary. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Anna Della Subin · Gallop, Gallop: Right and Left Cids

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, cultivated his own personal army, made up of both Christians and Muslims...

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 30/01/2026

‘Berend is writing with deicidal intent: once the myth has been fully exposed to the light of fact, she insists, everyone should stop worshipping El Cid. “His heroisation,” she writes, “must be abandoned.”’ @annadella.bsky.social on a new account of the medieval knight www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Anna Della Subin · Gallop, Gallop: Right and Left Cids

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, cultivated his own personal army, made up of both Christians and Muslims...

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 02/02/2026

‘El Cid’s sainthood seems to have more to do with poetry, and its immortal ability to keep speaking to changing contexts.’ @annadella.bsky.social on the medieval mercenary. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Anna Della Subin · Gallop, Gallop: Right and Left Cids

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, cultivated his own personal army, made up of both Christians and Muslims...

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 29/01/2026

Anna Della Subin · Gallop, Gallop: Right and Left Cids

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, cultivated his own personal army, made up of both Christians and Muslims...

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Harper’s Magazine @harpers.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

“The great theme across Marina Warner’s work is metamorphosis, “of bodies changed / to different forms,” as Ovid sang.” —Anna Della Subin (@annadella.bsky.social)

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Harper’s Magazine @harpers.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

“To inquire into the soul is to enter the realm of the political. Along with goods for trade and plundered wealth, concepts of the soul have traveled the networks of empire.” —Anna Della Subin (@annadella.bsky.social)

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Harper’s Magazine @harpers.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

“In Warner’s work, new technologies do not dispel but verify enchantment, confirming the presence, ever around us, of an unseen world.” @annadella.bsky.social from a talk delivered at the conference Enchanting Wor(l)ds: The Works of Marina Warner.

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Equator @equatormag.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

A new magazine of politics, culture, art. Coming soon. Sign up to our mailing list: www.equator.org/ (Still image from a film by Yto Barrada)

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Nabil Salih @nabilsalih.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

“When I moved the time machine’s lever to the year 1991,/it began to shake severely and seemed as if on fire,” Mikhail writes, recalling the terror of living through Operation Desert Storm. In the current issue of the @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

nybooks.com

‘Her Own Cuneiform’ | Anna Della Subin

The poet Dunya Mikhail is preoccupied with Iraq’s urgent present, but she studies it with the care of an archaeologist exhuming relics of the deep past.

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Anna Della Subin @annadella.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

In Dunya Mikhail's work, the mythic, the journalistic, and the poetic meet; war transforms into a Type A character, and Enheduana talks with Siri in a dream. My latest in @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

nybooks.com

‘Her Own Cuneiform’ | Anna Della Subin

The poet Dunya Mikhail is preoccupied with Iraq’s urgent present, but she studies it with the care of an archaeologist exhuming relics of the deep past.

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150 Years of Snark @snark150.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

If you follow the sun around the globe at six o'clock, it's always six o'clock. snrk.de/breakfast-in...

https://snrk.de/breakfast-in-tahiti/

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Snark mark 2/5:

Its habit of getting up late you’ll agree
　That it carries too far, when I say
That it frequently breakfasts at five-o’clock tea,
　And dines on the following day.

In November 1859, Dodgson gave a lecture at a meeting of the Ashmolean Society on “Where does the Day begin?”. A stopped clock is right 24 times a day, if you start carrying the clock around the globe due West at an angular speed of 15°/h once it has stopped. (It’s almost like the mad tea-party having always six o’clock while moving around the table.) Only the day date suddenly would change somewhere. (That’s where in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland the March Hare quickly changes the topic.)

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Anna Della Subin @annadella.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

In Episode 4 of FICTION & THE FANTASTIC, it's always six o'clock. Marina Warner and I step across the silvery mist of Lewis Carroll's looking-glass, to a place where queens scoot backwards and can remember the future. We ask, who was it that dreamed it all? @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and...

Podcast: Marina Warner and Anna Della Subin · Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Alice in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll

London Review of Books

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Anna Della Subin @annadella.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Sahlins detected “a clear and simple law of revolution”: that it is the rulers, not the revolutionaries, who undermine a society’s government. “It is from deep traditional values that the opposition draws its outrage—and in defense of them, takes to the streets.” www.thenation.com/article/cult...

thenation.com

The Enchanted Worlds of Marshall Sahlins

What if we saw the study of ghosts, gods, and other metapersons as worthy of a science of its own?

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Anna Della Subin @annadella.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

In Episode 3 of FICTION & THE FANTASTIC, Marina Warner and I enter the labyrinth of Italo Calvino's INVISIBLE CITIES, and the text that inspired its frame, the 13th century travels of Marco Polo, composed from a prison cell. www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and... @lrb.co.uk

Podcast: Marina Warner and Anna Della Subin · Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Invisible Cities’ by Italo Calvino

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Anna Della Subin @annadella.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Episode 2 of FICTION & THE FANTASTIC is out, wherein Marina Warner and I take on a longtime favorite of mine—and to each her own pronunciation of "Houyhnhnm," the race of intelligent horses who have colonized mankind... www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and... @londonreview.bsky.social

Podcast: Marina Warner and Anna Della Subin · Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ by Jonathan Swift

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 31/01/2025

There are now more than fifty LRB writers on Bluesky - including @torilmoi.bsky.social, @jessiechilds.bsky.social, @sophiagoodfriend.bsky.social and @bekadiski.bsky.social with writing in our new issue and on the blog this week. Read and follow them here: go.bsky.app/5CZWQgk

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Anna Della Subin @annadella.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

Introducing FICTION & THE FANTASTIC, a new podcast series from the LRB, wherein Marina Warner and I traverse the classics of enchantment, to discover how it has been a mode of inquiry and hypothesis.... www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and... @londonreview.bsky.social