Monthly Archives: January 2018

Hutchinsons sent me a proof copy of Marc Mulholland’s The Murderer of Warren Street, coming out in May, for a ‘puff’ on the dust cover. It’s about the life and grisly death of one of the French proscrits, or exiles, … Continue reading →

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Brexit, it is clearly being pursued now with the utmost inefficiency. The government appears clueless and divided. Could this be deliberate? Many in the government, including Theresa May, didn’t want Brexit in the first … Continue reading →

‘Presidents Club’ goings-on – all over the newspapers today – are at least as much a sign of class and wealth inequality as of endemic sexism. I first observed these kinds of depravity when I was at Cambridge; a predominately … Continue reading →

When he first put it on the side of the Brexit bus, Boris Johnson’s claim that leaving the EU would save Britain £350 million a week that could be spent on the National Health Service was almost universally derided as … Continue reading →

Civilized debate stands no chance against the forces now arraigned against it, from the lowest depths of the ‘blogosphere’ to the highest reaches of the US government. ‘Fake news’ is the aspect being highlighted presently, turning President Trump’s neat phrase … Continue reading →

[NOTE: This was the outcome of my 3-day rush to complete the LRB’s latest commission. In the end they didn’t like it – ‘not what we wanted’; which was a mere description of the affair, plus some ‘what if’ speculations. … Continue reading →

Trump’s retweeting of fake ‘Britain First’ propaganda a few weeks ago, quickly slapped down by Theresa May, who was then re-slapped down by Trump, isn’t by itself evidence of a two-way link between him and our own neo-Nazis. But there’s … Continue reading →

Just back from Stockholm: a complicated journey – tunnelbana, flyggbus, plane, train, tube, train, taxi, all the way dragging a case full of heavy Xmas pressies – which always leaves me pretty shagged out. I arrived to find a request … Continue reading →

For a socialist and active anti-imperial campaigner for sixty years – apartheid, Suez, Rhodesia, Vietnam – to be seen to be defending the British Empire will strike some as not only perverse, but also dangerous to his reputation, his career, … Continue reading →

Toby Young’s appointment to the new British universities ‘Watchdog’ committee, widely criticised by academics, students and on the Left, is reminiscent of Donald Trump’s selection of people for high office on no other grounds than their ideological views. Young, of … Continue reading →