Diary

Jenny Diski: Hairdressing, 2 March 2000

“... exactly the way a person was supposed to be in 1964. Thin as a leaf, a Biba size eight, hips that held hipsters perfectly in place, and legs that were perfectly designed for emerging from skirts that were little more than a pelmet. But – oh what a waste of temporary good fortune – none of that mattered. My 17th birthday present was a haircut at ...”

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
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“... 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 ...”

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
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“... 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 ...”

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
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“... 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 ...”

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
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“... 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 ...”

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
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“... 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 ...”

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
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“... 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 ...”

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
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“... 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 ...”

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
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“... 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 ...”

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
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“... 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
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“... 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 ...”

At the Movies

Andrew O’Hagan: M. Night Shyamalan, 17 July 2008

The Happening 
directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
June 2008Show More
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“... he sold himself, inside the movies and out, as a magical truth-teller, a big budget shaman who held the keys to several kingdoms. He then got a critical leathering for The Village (2004), a film which appeared to have extended all his certainties into paranoias. When this happens it is usual for a gifted director’s neediness to overcome his ...”

Short Cuts

Christian Lorentzen: The Trump Regime, 1 December 2016

“... alt-right. Bannon has been appointed chief strategist in the Trump White House, the position held by Karl Rove during the Bush administration. Allegations about Bannon’s unsavoury character have ranged from anti-Semitism (his ex-wife’s affidavit in their divorce case alleges he didn’t want their daughters going to school with too many Jews) to ...”

At the Pinault Collection

Anne Wagner: Charles Ray, 21 July 2022

“... steel make such concerted use of the brilliant light effects inherent in its surface. Only David Smith has pursued them as diligently as Ray. The two men share a commitment to contingency as well as a medium: not just steel (itself an alloy of iron), but stainless steel in particular, another alloy, first produced in the early 20th century by adding ...”
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