Peter Campbell, the LRB’s resident designer and art critic, who wrote more than 300 pieces for the paper since almost its very first issue and painted or designed the covers, died this afternoon. His review of Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century by Sabine Rewald will appear in the issue just gone to press.
As Wynne Godley observed in the LRB nearly twenty years ago, the current crisis in the EU, and governments' inability to deal with it, were inevitable given the terms of the Maastricht Treaty (yes, we've linked to the piece before, and may well link to it again): The incredible lacuna in the Maastricht programme is that, while it contains a blueprint for the establishment and modus operandi of an independent central bank, there is no blueprint whatever of the analogue, in Community terms, of a central government.
The company secretary of the Russell Group, Glynne Stanfield, has told Times Higher Education that 'universities could be in private hands in six months':
Mr Stanfield said private equity firms or "trade buyers" (established private higher education providers) could buy out a university in its entirety and thus gain its degree-awarding powers...
A private equity firm or trade buyer could buy a stake in a university, providing the institution with working capital in return for using its degree-awarding powers overseas, for example.
'It would not be surprising if the first resignation were to come from Liam Fox,' John Gray wrote in the LRB nearly a year ago (though he admittedly didn't have Adam Werrity in mind).
Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.
For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.