Ian Gilmour edited the Spectator in the 1950s when Karl Miller, the founding editor of the LRB, was its literary editor. He became a Conservative MP in 1962 and was Lord Privy Seal for the first two years of the Thatcher government. A Tory ‘wet’, he wasn’t sympathetic to her policies and regretted not resigning before she could sack him. His books include Dancing with Dogma: Britain under Thatcherism (a picture of Gilmour and Thatcher dancing together can be found on the cover of the LRB of 9 July 1992) and The Making of the Poets: Byron and Shelley in Their Time. He died in 2007.
Ian Gilmour’s deft and learned book is concerned with the lives of Byron and Shelley up to the morning on which Byron woke up and found himself famous. The poets weren’t to meet for...
Ian Gilmour is one of the most leftwing figures in British politics: a feat he has achieved by not moving. He remains upright amid the ruins of a Keynesian political economy while the two major...
Ian Gilmour could scarcely have timed the publication of this book better. The last few weeks really have been a Marxist ‘conjuncture’: a heightened moment when social realities can no...
Ian Gilmour is a distinguished and highly intelligent example of a once rare species: he is a Conservative with a cause. Unfortunately for him, however – and perhaps for the rest of us as...
Sir Ian Gilmour has written a splendid book about a splendid subject. The question he asks is: ‘How did Monetarism capture the Conservatives?’ It is a genuine mystery, and also a very...
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