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What a treat yesterday to see a production of David Hare's Skylight , with Bill Nighy and Carey Mulligan, right in my own little town. Photo Credit: John Haynes, New York Times The New York Times  called it a "nigh perfect production" in a review of the London stage play last summer. Perhaps the reviewer meant a "Nighy" perfect production -- playing the protagonist Tom, Bill Nighy is brilliant, all restless energy, sometimes twitchy, sometimes explosive. The female character, Kyra, unfolds more slowly. Though considerably younger than her one-time lover, she is more mature -- contemplative, nurturing and parsing any anger she has rather than giving into it, ready to acknowledge that personal happiness does not seem to be her lot, and yet finding slivers of happiness and satisfaction in other ways as she goes through her days. In person at the Wyndham Theatre in the West End this must have been an absolutely physical experience. These two actors, along ...

In 1974, John Le Carré published the first novel in his Karla trilogy, entitled Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy . In the novel, the professions in a traditional British children's rhyme are used as code names for British spies engaged in cold war drama with the Soviet Union. I thought about Le Carré this past weekend. We had come to the end of the international symposium I was hosting, devoted to diplomatic and cultural relations between Russia and Iran in the 1820s. After two days of intense conversations, it was time to sum up. An immensely rich topic, full of intrigue and complicated relationships, "official versions" of tragic events that simply don't ring true, and long-lasting ramifications for varieties of peoples -- from Persians and Russians to Armenians and Georgians, not to mention the English. I had invited twelve scholars from seven countries to come to Ohio State and speak about the period. We had art historians and diplomatic historians, literary scholar...