London Review of Books

What do we mean by it?

J.G.A. Pocock, 7 January 1993

The Cambridge History of Political Thought: 1450-1700
edited by J.H. Burns and Mark Goldie.
Cambridge, 798 pp., £60, August 1991, 0 521 24716 0Show More

“... in the languages of theology, jurisprudence, humanism and philosophy, and may be said to have been held together by a concept of ‘the political’ sufficiently coherent and idiosyncratically Latin and Western to raise the question whether ‘political thought’ can be held to exist in the culture of other civilisations ...”

Diary

Gaby Wood: On Gene Kelly, 21 March 1996

“... personally. Looking at that close-up now, that impeccably slicked hair and impossibly white grin, held for much longer than it takes to say ‘cheese’, I can see a glimpse of what David Thomson calls Kelly’s ‘harsh, calculating cheerfulness’. It is a picture of an all-American confidence, one that was not just ...”

The Sacred Sofa

E.S. Turner, 11 December 1997

The House of Lords: From Saxon Wargods to a Modern Senate
by John Wells.
Hodder, 298 pp., £20, October 1997, 0 340 64928 3Show More

“... the theatre of a state opening of Parliament, featuring such kenspeckle figures as ‘Sir David Frost arriving to exchange a word with his father-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk and Earl Marshal’, and the Earl Marshal pointing out the patriotic wall paintings to his French guests and saying: ‘Vous voyez? Agincourt. Autre victoire pour nous. Victoire ...”

Mr Straight and Mr Good

Paul Foot: Gordon Brown, 19 February 1998

Gordon Brown: The Biography
by Paul Routledge.
Simon and Schuster, 358 pp., £17.99, February 1998, 0 684 81954 6Show More

“... This gap could easily be filled by the ‘social forces of production’, but those forces were held back by the so-called free market. It had become ‘increasingly impossible to manage the economy both for private profit and the needs of society as a whole’. The solution had to be drastic: ‘a massive and irreversible shift of power to working ...”

On Darwin’s Trouble with the Finches

Andrew Berry: The genius of Charles Darwin, 7 March 2002

Evolution’s Workshop: God and Science on the Galapagos Islands
by Edward Larson.
Penguin, 320 pp., £8.99, February 2002, 0 14 100503 3Show More

“... Darwin visited was by no means virginal, nonetheless. Two hundred of Ecuador’s criminals were held in a penal settlement on Charles Island (modern Floreana); mariners had introduced domestic animals, notably goats, to several islands; and the practice of stocking up with giant tortoises as a source of fresh meat for the long voyage across the Pacific had ...”

Magnifico

David Bromwich: This was Orson Welles, 3 June 2004

Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life
by Peter Conrad.
Faber, 384 pp., £20, September 2003, 0 571 20978 5Show More

“... it: ‘In a less confused world, his glory would be greater than his guilt.’ In a similar mood, David Thomson published a biography in which every chapter ends with a dialogue of self-examination by the critic, and in which Welles’s best-known innovation is side-swiped and helped to its feet all in the course of a sentence: ‘In truth, there was more ...”

Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat

David Runciman: Thatcher’s Rise, 6 June 2013

Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography. Vol. I: Not for Turning
by Charles Moore.
Allen Lane, 859 pp., £30, April 2013, 978 0 7139 9282 3Show More

“... by a number of others. On 9 April, Sands was elected to the House of Commons in a by-election held in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. On 5 May he died. Thatcher came under immense international pressure, particularly from the United States and the Vatican, to do something. On 12 May a second hunger striker, Francis Hughes, died. The families of the other ...”

Reflections on the Independence Referendum

“... south of the border, and this raises two big questions at least. What would have happened had David Cameron not foolishly refused to include a third, ‘devo-max’ option on the ballot? And, whatever the result, will political self-interest and the need to survive finally begin to push the UK’s two so-called main parties in the direction of localism ...”

Our Slaves Are Black

Nicholas Guyatt: Theories of Slavery, 4 October 2007

Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
by David Brion Davis.
Oxford, 440 pp., £17.99, May 2006, 0 19 514073 7Show More

The Trader, the Owner, the Slave
by James Walvin.
Cape, 297 pp., £17.99, March 2007, 978 0 224 06144 5Show More

The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000
by Colin Kidd.
Cambridge, 309 pp., £16.99, September 2006, 0 521 79324 6Show More

The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview
by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene Genovese.
Cambridge, 828 pp., £18.99, December 2005, 0 521 85065 7Show More

“... rise of antislavery in Britain and America coincide with an intensification of racial thinking? David Brion Davis’s Inhuman Bondage throws light on the process by which slavery became exclusively black. There were many European precedents for white slavery, not only in the classical period but in the trading networks of the late medieval ...”

Sacred Text

Richard Gott: Guatemala, 27 May 1999

Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans
by David Stoll.
Westview, 336 pp., £20, February 1999, 0 8133 3574 4Show More

“... from his car and ransom him in exchange for Camilo Sánchez, one of the guerrilla chiefs held in prison. Mein’s car was stopped, but he refused to go quietly and was shot in the scrimmage. Sánchez, of course, was immediately executed. That particular guerrilla movement soon collapsed, but US military and intelligence assistance to successive ...”

Now to Stride into the Sunlight

Ian Jack: The Brexiters, 15 June 2017

What Next: How to Get the Best from Brexit
by Daniel Hannan.
Head of Zeus, 298 pp., £9.99, November 2016, 978 1 78669 193 4Show More

The Bad Boys of Brexit: Tales of Mischief, Mayhem & Guerrilla Warfare in the EU Referendum Campaign
by Arron Banks.
Biteback, 354 pp., £9.99, June 2017, 978 1 78590 205 5Show More

All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain’s Political Class
by Tim Shipman.
William Collins, 688 pp., £9.99, June 2017, 978 0 00 821517 0Show More

“... Next: How to Get the Best from Brexit. Striding into the sunlight, we encounter Adam Smith and David Ricardo and the slightly more contemporary figure of Theresa May, whose ambition to make Britain ‘the global leader in free trade’ Hannan quotes approvingly. Free trade is the great elixir. ‘Free trade doesn’t simply put more money into the hands of ...”

A Walnut in Sacrifice

Nick Richardson: How to Cast a Spell, 7 November 2024

The Grimoire Encyclopedia: Volume 1
by David Rankine.
Hadean Press, 739 pp., £39.99, April 2023, 978 1 914166 36 5Show More

The Grimoire Encyclopedia: Volume 2
by David Rankine.
Hadean Press, 660 pp., £39.99, April 2023, 978 1 914166 37 2Show More

Art of the Grimoire
by Owen Davies.
Yale, 256 pp., £25, October 2023, 978 0 300 27201 7Show More

“... by nominal Christians who made a great show of piety in their writing.‘Solomon, the Son of David, King of Israel, hath said that the beginning of our Key is to fear God, to adore Him, to honour Him with contrition of heart, to invoke Him in all matters which we wish to undertake, and to operate with very great devotion, for thus God will lead us in the ...”

Baseline Communism

Richard Seymour: David Graeber’s Innovations, 14 August 2025

The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World: Essays
by David Graeber, edited by Nika Dubrovsky.
Allen Lane, 356 pp., £25, November 2024, 978 0 241 61155 5Show More

“... When David Graeber left academia in 2005, he had no intention of going back. His contract had been cancelled by Yale, supposedly after colleagues objected to his tardiness – though he suspected the real reason was that he had stood up for a student organiser whom the authorities wanted rid of. One of the brightest anthropologists of his generation, he scorned his peers on the way out ...”

By San Carlos Water

Neal Ascherson, 18 November 1982

Authors take sides on the Falklands
edited by Cecil Woolf and Jean Moorcroft Wilson.
Cecil Woolf, 144 pp., £4.95, August 1982, 0 900821 63 9Show More

The Falklands War: The Full Story
by the Sunday Times ‘Insight’ Team.
Deutsch and Sphere, 276 pp., £2.50, October 1982, 0 233 97515 2Show More

The Winter War: The Falklands
by Patrick Bishop and John Witherow.
Quartet, 153 pp., £2.95, September 1982, 0 7043 3424 0Show More

Iron Britannia: Why Parliament waged its Falklands war
by Anthony Barnett.
Allison and Busby, 160 pp., £2.95, November 1982, 0 85031 494 1Show More

Falklands/Malvinas: Whose Crisis?
by Martin Honeywell.
Latin American Bureau, 135 pp., £1.95, September 1982, 0 906156 15 7Show More

Los Chicos de la Guerra
by Daniel Kon.
Editorial Galerna, Buenos Aires, August 1982Show More

A Message from the Falklands: The Life and Gallant Death of David Tinker, Lieut RN
compiled by Hugh Tinker.
Junction, 224 pp., £3.50, November 1982, 0 86245 102 7Show More

“... by homicidal maniacs on a collision course are also coming closer to one another. The novelist David Lodge, in one of the earnest but flustered contributions typical of Authors take sides on the Falklands, is more realistic. He writes that regaining the Falklands is not worth one human life. But he then confesses: ‘There is no doubt in my mind that ...”

Fat Man

Steven Shapin: Churchill’s Bomb, 26 September 2013

Churchill’s Bomb: A Hidden History of Science, War and Politics
by Graham Farmelo.
Faber, 554 pp., £25, October 2013, 978 0 571 24978 7Show More

“... dog, and if you don’t love my dog you damn well can’t love me.’) In Britain’s War Machine, David Edgerton makes the plausible judgment that ‘no scientist ever had more influence in British history; and probably no academic either.’* The Churchill who decided these matters was almost always a Churchill-Lindemann hybrid. Decision-making with respect ...”

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