Colin Kidd

A central tenet of the current Eurosceptic case resides in the contrast between English pragmatists, blessed with an instinctive distrust of the systems concocted by philosophers, and dreamy Continentals whose chequered histories bear witness to a dangerous addiction to fresh starts, a priori blueprints, legal codification and all the other follies of political rationalism. This caricature...

Among the intellectual figures who have shaped the modern world Adam Smith stands out as someone who doesn’t frighten the laity, might be positively welcomed indeed by middle England. Should the neighbours catch a glimpse of the Wealth of Nations sitting on the bookshelf alongside Thatcher’s memoirs or the latest Delia Smith, there’s no risk of ostracism. Adam Smith’s...

“Relocating the Puritan ancestors from folksy Thanksgiving remembrance to a place of honour (or dishonour) as the principal begetters of the American way of doing politics, [Morone] proposes that Puritan ideals loom large behind the ‘zero-tolerance’ version of liberalism. The Puritans first conjured up the notion of America as a redeemer nation with a sacred mission, popularised the jeremiad – a sermon of complaint against backsliding and declension – which would become in time ‘a kind of American anthem’, and set precedents for the harsh treatment of demonic otherness.”

Globalisation presents formidable challenges for history, a discipline which is congenitally nationalist. The academic study of the past emerged during the 19th century in tandem with the rise of European nationalisms, and remains coloured by its origins. This sinister twinship wasn’t acknowledged, however, until in recent decades historians began to confront their subject’s...

Since the ‘stolen’ election of 2000 the Republican Party has set out its values with a starkness not revealed even during the despised regimes of Nixon and Reagan. This has yielded a rich seam of material for satirical film-makers, caricaturists and polemicists, though at some cost for dispassionate analysis of the political scene. Cartoonish simplicities abound. The electoral...