Conspire Slowly, Act Quickly

David Runciman: Thatcher Undone, 2 January 2020

Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography Vol. III: Herself Alone 
by Charles Moore.
Allen Lane, 1072 pp., £35, October 2019, 978 0 241 32474 5
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“... in public as she was willing to go in private. In 1992, in a letter to the Eurosceptic MP Teddy Taylor, she wrote:I would personally think it is terribly important that those who have been very doubtful about the European enterprise should have some kind of alternative strategy clearly set out … I have always felt that the best answer for us was to be a ...”

Another Country

Adam Shatz: Visions of America, 5 February 2026

“... Holiday, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. Their music embodied the promise of another country, one that was true to its professed ideals. Its very existence seemed miraculous. A vernacular music, created by the descendants of slaves, had evolved into the country’s greatest art form. ‘It was a ...”

Where will we live?

James Meek: The Housing Disaster, 9 January 2014

“... on the dominance of the big seven private housebuilding companies – in descending order of size, Taylor Wimpey, Barratt Homes, Persimmon, Bellway, Redrow, Bovis and Crest Nicholson – who between them have almost 40 per cent of the market in new homes. But the most striking thing in the document is a chart displaying the history of Britain, in housebuilding ...”

Fugitive Crusoe

Tom Paulin: Daniel Defoe, 19 July 2001

Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions 
by Maximilian Novak.
Oxford, 756 pp., £30, April 2001, 0 19 812686 7
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Political and Economic Writings of Daniel Defoe 
edited by W.R. Owens and P.N. Furbank.
Pickering & Chatto, £595, December 2000, 1 85196 465 7
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“... of Harvard. The American connection can be sensed in Crusoe, and it is wittily glanced at by Mark Twain as he rewrites the novel with a tender and mischievous irony (Huck’s account of the contents of the catfish’s stomach – a brass button, a round ball ‘and lots of rubbage’ – is pure Defoe). At Morton’s Academy, students were taught science ...”

Hooted from the Stage

Susan Eilenberg: Living with Keats, 25 January 2024

Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph 
by Lucasta Miller.
Vintage, 357 pp., £12.99, April 2023, 978 1 5291 1090 6
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Keats’s Odes: A Lover’s Discourse 
by Anahid Nersessian.
Verso, 136 pp., £12.99, November 2022, 978 1 80429 034 7
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“... Keats had written: ‘I am in such a situation that were it not for the assistance of Brown & Taylor [his publisher], I must be as badly off as a man can be.’ George would not take the hint. When he left again for America he did so with far more money than Keats believed he had a right to. Keats may have been wrong in his accounting; the situation was ...”

Market Forces and Malpractice

James Meek: The Housing Crisis, 4 July 2024

“... where was he going to live? – in the context of a housing shortage so dire that Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, has reported instances of prisoners being issued with tents and sleeping bags on release. After getting out, Grimshaw lived in a supervised hostel for eight weeks, then moved into the two-bedroom house where I met ...”

One Exceptional Figure Stood Out

Perry Anderson: Dmitri Furman, 30 July 2015

“... in the divine is, thankfully, as strong as ever.3 In a third variant, at a loftier level where Taylor and Dworkin join hands, a philosophy of belief assures readers that whatever they may think, religion still provides the spiritual springboard of their lives, while a philosophy of disbelief informs them of the vital need for religion, even if they can ...”

Courage, mon amie

Terry Castle: Disquiet on the Western Front, 4 April 2002

“... reduced me to sudden tears.) I began absorbing ever more specialised fare: Macdonald’s books, Taylor and Tuchman on the political background, battle histories of Gallipoli, Verdun and Passchendaele, books about Haig and Kitchener, VAD nurses, brave dead subalterns and monocled mutineers. I read Michael Hurd’s desolating biography – The Ordeal of Ivor ...”

The Tower

Andrew O’Hagan, 7 June 2018

“... a death, a very public one, and to ignore it, or let it go in a cloud of unknowing, would fail to mark their attempts at survival. It is hard to think about, but these people all went up to the top of the tower looking for a chance. Your browser does not support html5 video. 'Raymond was looking after them'.Most of the stories are hard to bear. The ...”