Enoch Powell
Here, I think, is Enoch Powell’s abiding legacy: not his undeniable racism, or his cold disregard for the welfare of those he identified as ‘an alien wedge’, but rather the lurking angst he instilled and bequeathed about the future existence of the British nation, the sense of an imminent catastrophe. Boris Johnson excoriates the ‘doomsters’ and ‘gloomsters’. But who was the Father of all Doomsters? Who first implanted the obsessive belief that breaking out of the prison house of Brussels was our only possible salvation? More
Roman Fever
Depictions of malaria became linked with gender after it was realised that the female mosquito was more deadly than the male. Venturing out after dusk, her proboscis lubricious with saliva to aid penetration, she requires blood not for sustenance but for the production of eggs. Inevitably, the mosquito became connected with ideas of dangerous female agency. ‘The female mosquito is most emphatically a shrieking suffragette,’ a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle wrote in 1915. More
Parliament and the People
Where did the ‘radical’ political ideas recounted by the author come from? Were they developments of previously held beliefs? Did they have long roots, or were they generated by the exceptional events of the 1640s and by the rise of mass publication, which was largely a consequence of those events? It is hard to say, because we know so much less about public opinion before the expansion of printed source material in the civil wars. Whatever the answers, it is the short-term incitements to ‘radicalism’ that he brings to life. One essential component of its appeal was the hold on public affection of the institution of Parliament. More
One Summer in America
The president says it is ‘fake news’ that there were mass protests in London against his visit: ‘I heard that there were protests. I said where are the protests? I don’t see any protests.’ The president exults: ‘The meeting with the queen was incredible. I think I can say I really got to know her because I sat with her many times and we had automatic chemistry. You understand that feeling. It’s a good feeling. But she’s a spectacular woman … There are those that say they have never seen the queen have a better time.’ He later hangs a photo of himself with the queen outside the Oval Office, next to the one of himself with Kim Jong-un. More
LATEST AUDIO AND VIDEO
VIDEO Bishop v. Gunn
Colm Tóibín listens to Elizabeth Bishop and Thom Gunn reading their poetry. Watch »
AUDIO These Etonians
James Wood recalls his time at school with Boris Johnson, David Cameron etc. Listen »
