The ‘divine right of kings’ may sound obsolete, but it has resonances today. Richard II asks what it means to have power, to take power – and what we’re left with when it’s gone.
In Thomas Hardy’s novel The Woodlanders, the trees sing. Hardy’s exploration of the relationship between humans and trees resonates in an epoch of environmental catastrophe.
The possibilities of ‘more human than human’ artificial intelligence and the dangers of playing God and are not new – they’re the subjects of one of the world’s first science-fiction novels.