Essays – The Drouth

14th July 2026

A DOUBLE ACT, A CLASS ACT: Housing and Film as Things in a Kingdom by Johnny Rodger

The story of British housing as seen through film is one of ubiquitous and enduring apartheid. Yet, have the filmmakers themselves been immune to that social ill? Johnny Rodger gives an intersectional reading of housing and film with a prompt for plenty viewing as well as reading.

19th April 2026

Published by TheDrouth

ALL THE COPPER IN PERU by Michael Washburn

A story about contracts and commodities - all too resonant of the contemporary realities of geopolitics and the multinational corporate interests - New York prize-winning novelist and short story-writer, Michael Washburn, details the momentum of a dirty business.

19th April 2026

Published by TheDrouth

From a stage set to setting the stage : the sources and the evolution of motifs in Dali’s early surrealist oeuvre, by Dmitriy Soliterman

A sustained, penetrating and profound study of the forms in Dali's early work and informed deduction and speculation on their provenance by art critic Dmitriy Soliterman.

14th January 2026

Published by TheDrouth

PowerShift: the real energy question by Indra Adnan and Pat Kane, Spring Consortium

The Spring Consortium propose powerful cohesive and holisitic steps across the board as THE way to confront locally the daily worsening global polycrisis which faces us in energy, sustainability rising fascism and revived imperialism and climate meltdown. The first big event is SATURDAY JANUARY 18TH at CELTIC CONNECTIONS in Glasgow - Get involved!

14th January 2026

Published by TheDrouth

PILGRIM SQUINTS: on the Camino de Santiago reviewed by Wattana Songpetchmongkol

Wattana Songpetchmongkol brings his extensive research on walking to bear on Johnny Rodger's new book, and asks why do we walk?.. and ... Is a walk ever entirely your own walk?

16th August 2025

Published by TheDrouth

UNSUNG at the British Art Fair by Jessica Wood

Not so much a Salon des Refuses or a Rogues Gallery as the unsung heroes who made the scene what it was? Jessica Wood previews and examines the work in the Unsung exhibition to be held at the British Art Fair 2025, and attempts to understand and rationalise why these artists may have remained outside the limelight.

6th August 2025

Published by TheDrouth

Scotland’s Yesterday – an IRISH Production: Irish Pages reviewed by Owen Dudley Edwards

Scotland's greatest living Irish Historian on an Irish publication of Scottish writers on the state of Scotland. Owen Dudley Edwards casts a critical eye over the recently published Irish Pages Scotland issue.

18th July 2025

Published by TheDrouth

TENDING AN OLIVE TREE by Michael Mersinis

An exploration of the entanglement of art, ecology, and geopolitical violence through the translocation of a Palestinian olive tree sapling to a Scottish gallery space. Drawing on many sources including Aristophanes’ Peace, Michael Mersinis positions the olive tree sapling not as an object of aesthetic contemplation, but as a living, contested agent that disrupts dominant narratives of peace and belonging.

18th July 2025

Published by TheDrouth

RAIN, STEAM AND SPEED by Huddled McMasses

The American founding fathers took classical Rome as the model for their new Republic. Huddled McMasses examines the development of that story in a tale of two films with classical, particularly Roman, avatars - Gladiator I and II. He sees American popular culture as a mirror held up to the current drift to greater authoritarianism and more rigid patriarchical political structures.