Life at the Pastry Board

Stefan Collini: V.S. Pritchett, 4 November 2004

V.S. Pritchett: A Working Life 
by Jeremy Treglown.
Chatto, 308 pp., £25, October 2004, 9780701173227
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“... day in 1921 was his bid for freedom. Not surprisingly, Pritchett is a frequently quoted witness in Jonathan Rose’s recent book, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, in part because he was so eloquent about his sense of being educationally deprived. Like other autodidacts of his time (few of them, including Pritchett, entirely ...”

Which play was performed at the Globe Theatre on 7 February 1601?

Blair Worden: A Play for Plotters, 10 July 2003

“... involve Shakespeare’s writing in the politics of his time. Contemporary critics, Greenblatt and Jonathan Dollimore at their head, draw bold inferences from it. In widely influential works they describe the performance at the Globe as a ‘famous attempt to use the theatre to subvert authority’; as a move ‘to wrest legitimation from the established ...”

In Farageland

James Meek, 9 October 2014

“... evidence​ at street level from Thanet is that while a sense of being taken for a ride by remote powers – Brussels, Westminster, Holyrood, Pfizer – draws people to Ukip, it isn’t the key attraction. Asked the morning after the Scottish independence referendum whether ‘the English question’ – should there be an England-only legislature to match ...”

‘I wouldn’t pay it either’

Simon Skinner: World Cup Wallcharts, 25 June 2026

The Power and the Glory: A New History of the World Cup 
by Jonathan Wilson.
Little Brown, 608 pp., £12.99, May, 978 0 349 14573 0
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“... recent claims is that 1.5 billion people watched the 2022 final in Lusail. Football, as Jonathan Wilson has done as much as any football writer to demonstrate, matters in multiple dimensions, but the World Cup has a magnetism all its own, drawing in millions who don’t otherwise watch much football. Observing its rites and rituals sustains the ...”

What’s next?

James Wood: Afterlives, 14 April 2011

After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory 
by John Casey.
Oxford, 468 pp., £22.50, January 2010, 978 0 19 509295 0
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“... decline of belief in hell, and in the afterlife more generally, and thus in God’s supernatural powers and promises. Casey is not without his own excellent Pelagian stolidity, and original sin and total depravity bring forth his most stirring denunciations. He happily lays into Augustine and Calvin (and folds the cheerless Cardinal Newman into the mix). As ...”

Munir’s Victory

Owen Bennett-Jones, 10 September 2026

“... four hundred passengers hostage.The insurgency used to be led by tribal leaders, who have sweeping powers in their local areas. They decide all legal cases – sometimes relying on trial by fire or water. But over the last decade the tribal fighters have been joined by middle-class Balochs and – remarkably, in an area where women are routinely murdered in ...”

Worse than a Defeat

James Meek: Shamed in Afghanistan, 18 December 2014

The Good War: Why We Couldn’t Win the War or the Peace in Afghanistan 
by Jack Fairweather.
Cape, 488 pp., £20, December 2014, 978 0 224 09736 9
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Investment in Blood: The True Cost of Britain’s Afghan War 
by Frank Ledwidge.
Yale, 287 pp., £10.99, July 2014, 978 0 300 20526 8
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British Generals in Blair’s Wars 
edited by Jonathan Bailey, Richard Iron and Hew Strachan.
Ashgate, 404 pp., £19.95, August 2013, 978 1 4094 3736 9
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An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict 1978-2012 
by Mike Martin.
Hurst, 389 pp., £25, April 2014, 978 1 84904 336 6
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“... died. British Generals in Blair’s Wars kicks off with a vigorous attack on Tony Blair by Jonathan Bailey, who retired from the army as head of doctrine in 2005.2 But towards the end of the book, as the commanders who served in Afghanistan get their say, the dominant tone is of anger towards the Ministry of Defence and the army itself, which emerges ...”

The Israel Lobby

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, 23 March 2006

“... the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any ally’. In addition to the case of Jonathan Pollard, who gave Israel large quantities of classified material in the early 1980s (which it reportedly passed on to the Soviet Union in return for more exit visas for Soviet Jews), a new controversy erupted in 2004 when it was revealed that a key ...”

The King and I

Alan Bennett, 30 January 1992

“... history that was being published in the Eighties, particularly by Roy Porter. Michael Neve and Jonathan Miller separately suggested that the madness of George III would make a play, and Neve lent me The Royal Malady by Charles Chenevix Trench, which is still the best account of the King’s illness and the so-called Regency Crisis. I also read George III ...”

Notes on a Notebook

Andrew O’Hagan, 30 September 1999

“... In the course of a meeting in July 1998 between the Garvaghy Road Residents’ Coalition and Jonathan Powell, Chief of Staff to Tony Blair, the personal security of those present was mentioned. Reference was made to a letter doing the rounds in Portadown – I saw this letter – in which death threats were directed at Rosemary Nelson and Brendan ...”

Made by the Revolution

Perry Anderson: Mao’s Right Hand, 12 September 2024

Zhou Enlai: A Life 
by Chen Jian.
Harvard, 817 pp., £29.95, May, 978 0 674 65958 2
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“... English, they rarely contain any comment either describing or situating the sources they cite; as Jonathan Spence once pointed out, not all report or reminiscence of the period in China is necessarily reliable. Chen’s usage has to be taken on trust, which his judgment otherwise earns. The formidable scholarship on which the book is based yields a compelling ...”

The European Coup

Perry Anderson, 17 December 2020

“... as a continent – including states that are not part of the Community – in the world of powers at large, where borders and wars obtain; an inner sphere, comprising the Commission, the Court of Justice and Parliament of today’s EU; and an intermediate sphere composed of its member states as they deliberate in the Council of Ministers and its ...”

Reasons for Liking Tolkien

Jenny Turner: The Hobbit Habit, 15 November 2001

“... whom are basically human (hobbits, dwarfs, the men of Gondor and Rohan), some superhuman in both powers and goodness (elves, wizards, men of royal blood), some superhuman but evil (ringwraiths), some subhuman but sturdy with it (orcs, trolls). There are no monks or monasteries; in fact there is no religious activity on Middle Earth at all.The story begins in ...”

Love in a Dark Time

Colm Tóibín: Oscar Wilde, 19 April 2001

The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde 
edited by Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis.
Fourth Estate, 1270 pp., £35, November 2000, 1 85702 781 7
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“... with Wilde, he wrote her a letter in a tone more pompous than Lady Bracknell at the height of her powers: ‘As for my calling at Harcourt Street, you know, my dear Florence, that such a thing is quite out of the question: it would have been unfair to you, and me, and to the man you are going to marry, had we met anywhere else but under your mother’s ...”

Who Are They?

Jenny Turner: The Institute of Ideas, 8 July 2010

“... porn; campaigns in favour of global warming and freedom for corporations. Monbiot also follows Jonathan Matthews of Lobbywatch in reporting curious clusters of former LM contributors now working in public science education. For example, according to Monbiot the educational charity Sense about Science – a prominent supporter of Simon Singh in his recent ...”