Hope Springs Eternal
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.
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Yellow socks and guacamole
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.
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Democracy and Numbers
Does democracy mean that everyone has the right to have their will implemented? What if it clashes with everyone else’s will?
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The Tories, Europe and Scotland
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?
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Death and Life of the Bookshop
Adam Gopnik laments the recent closure of a famous Parisian bookshop. Elsewhere, however, la lutte continue, the fight continues.
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Don’t understand, just be afraid
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.
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Britain Brought To Book
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.
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In Praise Of Ali Smith
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.
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Misunderstanding Orwell
‘Nineteen-Eighty Four’ was first published sixty-six years ago today. Some people seemed to think that Big Brother was based on the unlikely figure of Clement Attlee.
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If at first you don’t succeed …
Ingeborg Rapoport was a recent medical graduate when she finished her doctoral thesis on diphtheria in Hamburg in 1938. But she was not allowed to submit it as her mother was of Jewish origin.