Book-burning is a recurring element in our cultural history, though mostly the authorities have found censorship and regulation more effective. For the people, however, a good show is always popular and great satisfaction can often be derived from the destruction of symbolic goods.
Like teaching, librarianship is a profession that has long been associated with women and offered them employment opportunities when many other paths were closed off. And occasionally too they were cherished.
In 1983 the British Labour Party campaigned on a radical left-wing manifesto that delivered it its worst general election result since 1918. Now, it seems, it wants to do it all over again.
Is an apparent lack of intellectual or cultural sophistication an essentially English trait? It is certainly one that can bear fruit for the populist politician.
Does democracy mean that everyone has the right to have their will implemented? What if it clashes with everyone else’s will?
If the UK votes to leave the European Union could Scotland be dragged out against its will? And in those circumstances could another independence referendum be resisted?
Adam Gopnik laments the recent closure of a famous Parisian bookshop. Elsewhere, however, la lutte continue, the fight continues.
After graduating from Columbia, John Berryman headed to Cambridge. ‘Yeats, Yeats, I’m coming! It’s me!’ a later poem has him exclaiming from the ship.
Back in 1988, in a speech in Bruges, Margaret Thatcher laid down the law to the Europeans as to how they should run their show. She did at least acknowledge, however, that Europe was something with which Britain was connected.
Alex Clark pays tribute to novelist Ali Smith for her generous work on behalf of other literary practitioners, and in particular her championing of first-time authors.