Moderation or Death

Christopher Hitchens: Isaiah Berlin, 26 November 1998

Isaiah Berlin: A Life 
by Michael Ignatieff.
Chatto, 386 pp., £20, October 1998, 0 7011 6325 9
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The Guest from the Future: Anna Akhmatova and Isaiah Berlin 
by György Dalos.
Murray, 250 pp., £17.95, September 2002, 0 7195 5476 4
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... a dizzying subplot, he also involved himself intimately in the quarrel between Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion over the project of a Jewish National Home, and in the attempts by both to play off the British against the Americans. And, though he showed himself able to take risks in leaking classified material that favoured the Zionist cause, he also found ...

One Summer in America

Eliot Weinberger, 26 September 2019

... They gave it to you for what reason?’*The president comments on the election of Boris Johnson: ‘Good man. He’s tough and he’s smart. They’re saying “Britain Trump”. They call him “Britain Trump”, and there’s people saying that’s a good thing. They like me over there.’*The president tweets: ‘Chairman Kim has a great and ...

Somerdale to Skarbimierz

James Meek, 20 April 2017

... Sir John Sunderland, Roger Carr, Rick Braddock, Ellen Marram, Guy Elliott, Rosemary Thorne, David Thompson, Sanjiv Ahuja, Wolfgang Berndt, Lord Patten and Raymond Viault. Only Berndt replied (Chris Patten’s assistant told me he was in ‘rural Asia’ without email, then, when the deadline was extended, too ill to respond). Berndt told me he ...

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

James Meek: On Social Housing, 10 September 2026

... of Britain Remade, a national campaign group led by, among others, a former adviser to Boris Johnson and the former head of policy at the Adam Smith Institute, cited the case as proof that ‘it is too hard to build things’ in the UK. In an op-ed for City AM Jeremy Driver, Britain Remade’s head of campaigns, said the cost of property had forced him ...

The Uncommon Reader

Alan Bennett, 8 March 2007

... More Cecil Beaton?’ Norman showed her the book he was looking at, this time something on David Hockney. She leafed through it, gazing unperturbed at young men’s bottoms hauled out of Californian swimming-pools or lying together on unmade beds. ‘Some of them,’ she said, ‘some of them don’t seem altogether finished. This one is quite ...