Hizbullah’s War

Zain Samir, 30 November 2023

“... the frontier. It stands at a height of nine metres, and consists of concrete slabs topped with a steel fence. Sprouting from the walls at regular intervals are slanted metal structures carrying surveillance and thermal cameras, along with other sensors and listening equipment, allowing Israel to keep the Lebanese side under constant watch.I drove the length ...”

An ’ell of an ’eadache

Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite: The General Strike, 13 August 2026

The Future in Our Past: The General Strike, 1926-2026 
by Callum Cant and Matthew Lee.
Verso, 154 pp., £11.99, April, 978 1 83674 261 6
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The Edge of Revolution: The General Strike that Shook Britain 
by David Torrance.
Bloomsbury, 320 pp., £20, March, 978 1 3994 2359 5
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Nine Days in May: The General Strike of 1926 
by Jonathan Schneer.
Oxford, 416 pp., £25, March, 978 0 19 289453 3
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Britain’s Revolutionary Summer: The General Strike of 1926 
by Edd Mustill.
Oneworld, 324 pp., £16.99, April, 978 1 83643 068 1
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“... granted that the establishment wanted to dominate the working classes. Studies by two academics, David Torrance and Jonathan Schneer, are aimed at a popular audience. Torrance focuses on high politics and elites, on the dubious basis that politicians and the middle classes are ‘more inclined to record their experiences than striking railwaymen, printers ...”
“... a champion of privatisation, attributes the dropping of the ‘re-’ to a fellow Conservative, David Howell, one of the back-room Tory ideas men tinkering obscurely with economic models while Edward Heath and Harold Wilson squared off against the unions in the 1960s and 1970s. (Howell was Thatcher’s first energy minister. He is now Baron Howell of ...”

Who Are They?

Jenny Turner: The Institute of Ideas, 8 July 2010

“... Party) in the early 1970s, but was expelled in 1973 for running a ‘secret faction’ with David Yaffe, then and now the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Group. Then Furedi fell out with Yaffe too and started another group, called the Revolutionary Communist Tendency to begin with, then the Revolutionary Communist Party. A friend of mine who ...”

Diary

Alan Bennett: What I Didn’t Do in 2007, 3 January 2008

“... is seemingly deserted, with none of the 1500 US personnel who work here showing their face. Mark Steel speaks first and despite the rain and the cold manages to get the audience laughing, though not the policemen, who in fairness are probably cold and wet and resent having to be here at all. When it’s my turn I say that I don’t in principle object to the ...”

How to Be Tudor

Hilary Mantel: Can a King Have Friends?, 17 March 2016

Charles Brandon: Henry VIII’s Closest Friend 
by Steven Gunn.
Amberley, 304 pp., £20, October 2015, 978 1 4456 4184 3
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“... and any number of ministers and favourites. In Mary Rose, his book about Brandon’s third wife, David Loades says: ‘He was present everywhere, but it is hard to pinpoint what he actually did.’ Throughout his career Charles accumulated grand-sounding titles, which confused outsiders into overestimating his importance as a policymaker. When he became ...”

Diary

Alan Bennett: What I did in 1995, 4 January 1996

“... the errant young man from the Singapore Stock Exchange, is interviewed in his Frankfurt prison by David Frost, the interview, made by Frost’s production company, broadcast by the BBC at ten this evening. The papers, which have had a preview, are full of Leeson’s self-justifications, but nobody seems to question the propriety of broadcasting such an ...”

Who’s in charge?

Chalmers Johnson: The Addiction to Secrecy, 6 February 2003

Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers 
by Daniel Ellsberg.
Viking, 498 pp., $29.95, October 2002, 0 670 03030 9
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“... says, ‘whether we had a right – any more than the French before us – to pursue by fire and steel in Indochina the objectives our leaders had chosen was a question that never occurred to me.’ His parents were professionals, of Russian Jewish ancestry but born in the US, and devout Christian Scientists. He went to Harvard on a full fellowship from the ...”

Vanity and Venality

Susan Watkins: The European Impasse, 29 August 2013

Un New Deal pour l’Europe 
by Michel Aglietta and Thomas Brand.
Odile Jacob, 305 pp., £20, March 2013, 978 2 7381 2902 4
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Gekaufte Zeit: Die vertagte Krise des demokratischen Kapitalismus 
by Wolfgang Streeck.
Suhrkamp, 271 pp., £20, March 2013, 978 3 518 58592 4
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The Crisis of the European Union: A Response 
by Jürgen Habermas, translated by Ciaran Cronin.
Polity, 120 pp., £16.99, April 2012, 978 0 7456 6242 8
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For Europe! Manifesto for a Postnational Revolution in Europe 
by Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Guy Verhofstadt.
CreateSpace, 152 pp., £9.90, September 2012, 978 1 4792 6188 8
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German Europe 
by Ulrich Beck, translated by Rodney Livingstone.
Polity, 98 pp., £16.99, March 2013, 978 0 7456 6539 9
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The Future of Europe: Towards a Two-Speed EU? 
by Jean-Claude Piris.
Cambridge, 166 pp., £17.99, December 2011, 978 1 107 66256 8
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Au Revoir, Europe: What if Britain Left the EU? 
by David Charter.
Biteback, 334 pp., £14.99, December 2012, 978 1 84954 121 3
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“... parliaments to provide a democratic sounding board for the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community, forerunner of the Commission. The Assembly was granted power of dismissal over the Authority and could vote down its budget. From the start, however, both institutions saw their relationship as one of close co-operation: unanimity would ...”

No Illusions

John Kerrigan: Syntax of Slavery, 20 November 2025

Atlantic Cataclysm: Rethinking the Atlantic Slave Trades 
by David Eltis.
Cambridge, 442 pp., £30, February, 978 1 009 51897 0
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Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery 
by Ana Lucia Araujo.
Chicago, 640 pp., £32, October 2024, 978 0 226 77158 8
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The Zorg: A Tale of Greed, Murder and the Abolition of Slavery 
by Siddharth Kara.
Doubleday, 304 pp., £22, October, 978 1 5299 6432 5
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Zong! 
by m. nourbeSe philip.
Silver Press, 256 pp., £13.99, November 2023, 978 0 9957162 4 7
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“... Slavers knew that pent-up rage could explode, prompting captives to rush ‘upon th’ unsparing steel’ of the seamen, before being shot down by volleys of gunfire from behind the barrier erected in anticipation of such showdowns.After passages laced with romance, Roscoe returns to the wretched routines of the slave ship, explaining that survivors of a ...”

Somerdale to Skarbimierz

James Meek, 20 April 2017

“... heart of the factory – three long, parallel blocks four and five storeys high made of brick and steel, with enormous windows – were the sports club, the football pitches and tennis courts. In the 1970s the factory had its own chiropodist, dentist and doctor. And these benefits came without the heavy hand of Quaker paternalism. The pay was good enough to ...”

‘What kind of people do they think we are?’

James Meek: On Social Housing, 10 September 2026

“... need to be housed) and low (people can’t afford the prices) at the same time.When I spoke to David O’Leary, executive director of the Home Builders Federation, a few months after Starmer took office, he was enthusiastic about Labour’s efforts. ‘What the government has done so far is more than we could have expected them to have done. They’ve ...”

After the Revolution

Neal Ascherson: In Georgia, 4 March 2004

“... secession war in 1993 (another $600,000 was intercepted before he could pay it into his account). David Mirtskhulava, the former minister of energy, had a mild heart attack when he was charged with pocketing $6 million on its way to pay Georgia’s bill for electricity imports. Georgia is not a sprawling continent, but a poor, steep country about the same ...”

How to Grow a Weetabix

James Meek: Farms and Farmers, 16 June 2016

“... endeavour as if it were both inevitable and eternal. The colliery tunnels have fallen in, the steel furnaces are winking out, the fishing fleets have gone for scrap; Britain’s trains are Japanese, its cars German, its clothes from China. And yet Britain still produces three-fifths of its own food. Farmers still raise livestock, plough fields, sow and ...”

A Reparation of Her Choosing

Jenny Diski: Among the Sufis, 17 December 2015

“... of behaviour. We all did then, they sat on bookshop shelves like a university course: Laing, David Stafford-Clark, Erving Goffman, Vance Packard, Michael Argyle, C.J. Adcock, Viktor Frankl. And more and more. They were all over the house, on tables, on the floor. She bought them, I bought them, Peter and his friends bought them. Somehow they were cheap ...”