EXTRA
William Davies on the Brexit mentalityLeave, and Leave Again
In the ongoing struggle to make sense of what Brexit is, ample attention has been paid to the ‘Br’, but comparatively little to the ‘exit’. The seductions, myths and affirmations of nationhood are raked through in search of what all this is about: Empire? Race? The Blitz? But what if the answer has been staring us in the face all along? What if there is in British political culture a deep, generalised urge to depart? More
FROM THE LATEST ISSUE
The Vice President’s Men
George H.W. Bush and Arthur Moreau’s activities have remained secret, and, as I learned while reporting on this aspect of history, those who knew of his activities at the time remain sceptical that they can be written about today. ‘I’m aware of what you’re referring to,’ one senior defence official told me. ‘And Art Moreau was just like “M”. But you are working in an area that remains highly classified, and even today it may be too sensitive to reveal the rudiments of our intelligence networks. I doubt if any records still exist.’ More
‘The Life of Saul Bellow’
What is at risk of being lost amid all the turkey stuffing is that Bellow was a witty writer, as much a snappy dresser in prose as he was splashed out in his slick duds, a cool operator and crafty observer beneath all his ponderous concerns and preoccupations. Bellow’s elegant assassin strikes, fly-by epiphanies and prose crescendos get periodically buried under researched word-tonnage intended to cement a legacy and ensure permanence. Like James Atlas, Zachary Leader lacks gorgeous finesse. More
People and Martians
While he deplored the Soviet regime and wanted all its dirty secrets exposed, there was a jokey, blokey aspect to Robert Conquest, a whiff of the Oxford debating society and student satirical review, that made him an anomalous figure in international Sovietology, which tended towards the deadly serious. For Conquest, the Soviet Union was no doubt an evil place, but above all it was a bizarre one, a society whose baroque self-inventions and elaborate mendacity made it an apt subject of black comedy. More
