Kindle Magazine - February 2016

In this issue

“When the power of love will replace the love of power, then will our world know the blessings of peace.”
—William Gladstone

Make love, not war, goes the old cliché. It is all we need, say the Beatles in a song that begins with the opening bars of ‘La Marseillaise’—a profoundly violent song that mentions watering furrows with impure blood—and ends with “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.” It has been celebrated in story and song for centuries; to quote Dumbledore, it is a force at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the forces of nature. But what are the politics of love? What is the nature of its power, and are there limits to that power: does it really conquer all? Who are the forces ranged against it, and what are the tools they use to police it? And is love simply emotion, or a decision, or a chemical reaction? What are the labours associated with it? These and other such questions are debated in Kindle’s February issue, dedicated to solving that riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma that Haddaway posed to the world: what is love?