Monthly Archives: February 2021

Here’s another reason to feel ashamed of being British just now, and glad of my (dual) Swedish nationality. I don’t want to push historical ‘lessons’ too far, but just to say that the present British government’s determination to prevent Shamima … Continue reading →

I suppose my main objection to ‘sloganising’ (see my last post) is that it oversimplifies issues, to the extent sometimes of getting them completely wrong, and always of misleading us. The same applies to the use of certain words without qualification, like – … Continue reading →

I won’t have been the first to notice how rational political discussion these days has been replaced by slogans, usually consisting of just three words. ‘Get Brexit Done’ seems to have won the last General Election for Boris; following on … Continue reading →

‘History’ – the subject, that is, not the events themselves – has a lot to answer for. (Well, the events themselves too, obviously; but that’s another matter.) I don’t know how important it is in helping to explain our present … Continue reading →

I had thought that seeking refuge in Sweden would release me, blessedly, from the political worry, pain, frustration and rage that I was experiencing almost every minute of my life in the new, post-Brexit UK.  Far away from the sound of … Continue reading →

It always seemed somehow wrong when the more Right-wing of the two main parties in Britain continued to call itself ‘Conservative’, even after every trace of its wanting to ‘conserve’ anything disappeared under Thatcher. Thatcher was in fact the most radical Conservative … Continue reading →

I thought my book about Victorian architecture had bombed. I found no reviews of it at the time, apart from a rather sniffy one by an ‘architectural historian’. (He didn’t like my pictures.) Then today I suddenly found a small … Continue reading →

Here’s our Education Minister’s recent proposal to police free speech in universities: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/landmark-proposals-to-strengthen-free-speech-at-universities. Its target, of course, is the ‘no-platforming’ of certain invited speakers, usually those identified as right-wing, homophobic, sexist or racist, by the intolerant Left. I’m not entirely against … Continue reading →

This resonated with me. https://www.facebook.com/groups/476197496373674/permalink/733414110652010/ I went to Cambridge, not Oxford, and was not from so ‘lowly’ a background as this former student. But Cambridge gave me my first experience of the Public school ‘types’ described here, both the Cameron … Continue reading →

There’s an anti-imperial aspect to British imperialism which is not often taken into account. It should be remembered that most Britons and Irish who emigrated to ‘settlement’ colonies like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and before that to the thirteen … Continue reading →