Diary

Luke de Noronha: At the Deportation Tribunal, 19 January 2023

... used to criminalise young black men. In a study published in 2016, the criminologists Patrick Williams and Becky Clarke wrote that while only a fraction of ‘serious youth violence’ offences in London and Manchester were committed by black people (27 per cent and 6 per cent respectively), most of those on the gang matrices in both cities were ...

His Whiskers Trimmed

Matthew Karp: Robert E. Lee in Defeat, 7 April 2022

Robert E. Lee: A Life 
by Allen Guelzo.
Knopf, 585 pp., $27.99, September 2021, 978 1 101 94622 0
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... 1950s, the USS Robert E. Lee was the third commissioned – after the George Washington and the Patrick Henry, but before the Abraham Lincoln. Adulation came from abroad, too: de Gaulle, touring Gettysburg with Eisenhower, praised Lee as the most brilliant general of the Civil War. Churchill, perhaps the most extravagant in a long line of Tory ...

Into the sunset

Peter Clarke, 30 August 1990

Ideas and Politics in Modern Britain 
edited by J.C.D. Clark.
Macmillan, 271 pp., £40, July 1990, 0 333 51550 1
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The Philosopher on Dover Beach 
by Roger Scruton.
Carcanet, 344 pp., £18.95, June 1990, 0 85635 857 6
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... Revival’ is the title of one important section of the book, containing essays by Patrick Minford, Martin Holmes and John Redwood. Minford recapitulates an already familiar analysis of the three parts of Thatcher’s economic programme, ‘the conquest of inflation, the promotion of efficiency, and the defeat of unemployment’, which were ...

In a Dry Place

Nicolas Tredell, 11 October 1990

On the Look-Out: A Partial Autobiography 
by C.H. Sisson.
Carcanet, 234 pp., £14.95, October 1989, 0 85635 758 8
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In Two Minds: Guesses at Other Writers 
by C.H. Sisson.
Carcanet, 296 pp., £18.95, September 1990, 0 85635 877 0
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... David Wright, ‘a literary instrument of precision’, and a long-time friend and supporter; Patrick Kavanagh, who was to be approached ‘with a large whisky in one’s outstretched hand’; George Barker, first seen ‘wearing a check suit and cap, all very new, as if in the course of an attempt to prove that he was not a poet but a bookmaker’. But ...

The End

Malcolm Bull, 11 March 1993

Posthistoire: Has History Come to an End? 
by Lutz Niethammer, translated by Patrick Camiller.
Verso, 176 pp., £19.95, January 1993, 0 86091 395 3
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When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture 
by Paul Boyer.
Harvard, 488 pp., £23.95, September 1992, 9780674951280
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... Four angels held back the winds of destruction. Until the redeemed had received the seal of the living God, nothing could be harmed. But now the servants of God are sealed, and the seventh seal has been opened. Six trumpets have sounded. A third of the trees have burned, a third of the sea has turned to blood, a third of the heavens has been darkened, and a third of mankind has been killed ...

’Oly, ’Oly, ’Oly

D.A.N. Jones, 20 December 1990

From Early Life 
by William Cooper.
Macmillan, 180 pp., £13.95, August 1990, 0 333 52367 9
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Son of Adam 
by Denis Forman.
Deutsch, 201 pp., £12.99, September 1990, 9780233985930
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A Welsh Childhood 
by Alice Thomas Ellis and Patrick Sutherland.
Joseph, 186 pp., £15.99, September 1990, 0 7181 3292 0
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Alarms and Excursions: Thirty Years in Israel 
by Naomi Shepherd.
Collins, 220 pp., £16, August 1990, 0 00 215333 5
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Birds of Ill Omen 
by Marie Seurat, translated by Dorothy Blair.
Quartet, 168 pp., £10.95, September 1990, 0 7043 2694 9
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... Only one of these five memoirs can be fairly called secular – quite unconcerned with the consolations of religion, untroubled by the complications. This is From Early Life by the oldest of the five authors, the novelist and scientist ‘William Cooper’: he was born in 1910 and brought up (as Harry Hoff) in the town of Crewe in Cheshire. Seniors in his family were determined chapel-goers, but Cooper-Hoff looks back at his childhood, over eighty years, with the quiet smile of a tolerant agnostic: his light, amused impressions illustrate the way England has become more secular than other nations, during this century ...

Strangers

John Lanchester, 11 July 1991

Serial Murder: An Elusive Phenomenon 
edited by Stephen Egger.
Praeger, 250 pp., £33.50, October 1990, 0 275 92986 8
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Serial Killers 
by Joel Norris.
Arrow, 333 pp., £4.99, July 1990, 0 09 971750 6
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Life after Life 
by Tony Parker.
Pan, 256 pp., £4.50, May 1991, 0 330 31528 5
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American Psycho 
by Bret Easton Ellis.
Picador, 399 pp., £6.99, April 1991, 0 330 31992 2
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Dirty Weekend 
by Helen Zahavi.
Macmillan, 185 pp., £13.99, April 1991, 0 333 54723 3
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Silence of the Lambs 
by Thomas Harris.
Mandarin, 366 pp., £4.99, April 1991, 0 7493 0942 3
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... interior life for his character: it’s a problem he tries to side-step by giving his character, Patrick Bateman, a 27-year-old Wall Street super-yuppie who goes around gruesomely murdering people in his spare time, no internal life at all. Bateman’s head is entirely filled with things like this: Price seems nervous and edgy and I have no desire to ask ...

Sorry to decline your Brief

Stephen Sedley, 11 June 1992

Judge for yourself 
by James Pickles.
Smith Gryphon, 242 pp., £15.99, April 1992, 1 85685 019 6
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The Barrister’s World 
by John Morison and Philip Leith.
Open University, 256 pp., £35, December 1991, 0 335 09396 5
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Advocates 
by David Pannick.
Oxford, 305 pp., £15, April 1992, 0 19 811948 8
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... of the statement that has been made tonight.’ Twenty-six days later a leading Belfast solicitor, Patrick Finucane, an effective and hard-working defender of people facing charges of terrorism, was shot dead by Protestant terrorists. The report of a committee of European lawyers commented: ‘It is hard to imagine that Douglas Hogg, a barrister who is the son ...

Lady Thatcher’s Bastards

Iain Sinclair, 27 February 1992

Class War: A Decade of Disorder 
edited by Ian Bone, Alan Pullen and Tim Scargill.
Verso, 113 pp., £7.95, November 1991, 0 86091 558 1
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... invented city, populated by cut-out symbols of oppression. Where are these phantom wine-bars? As Patrick Wright points out in A Journey through Ruins, it is a brutal ‘half-hour hike’ from the Bow Quarter fortress for anyone thirsty enough to trade life and shoulder-bag for a lime meniscus in their Mexican beer. Wine-bars in the neighbourhood of Kingsland ...

Not bloody likely

Paul Foot, 26 March 1992

Bloody Sunday in Derry: What really happened 
by Eamonn McCann, Maureen Shiels and Bridie Hannigan.
Brandon, 254 pp., £5.99, January 1992, 0 86322 139 4
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... fired the shot expressly told the inquiry that he shot the man he aimed at, and watched him fall. Patrick Doherty was shot in the back as he crawled away on his hands and knees. The bullet entered his buttock and went straight through his heart. Someone had filmed the young man’s death, so there was no doubt about what he was doing. Widgery concluded that ...

Connections

Colin Wallace, 8 October 1992

The Red Hand: Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland 
by Steve Bruce.
Oxford, 326 pp., £25, August 1992, 0 19 215961 5
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... policy in Northern Ireland. In January 1988, the then Attorney-General, Sir Patrick Mayhew, told the Commons that, given certain ‘considerations of national security’, no charges would be brought against eight named RUC officers for various offences including conspiracy to murder, nor against certain MI5 officers involved in ...

The Retreat from Monetarism

J.R. Shackleton, 6 February 1986

... a younger generation – in the United States, Robert Lucas and Thomas Sargent, and in the UK, Patrick Minford. These writers tend to see Friedman’s arguments as outdated, tarred with the same brush as the Keynesianism he previously denounced. New Classicals build their analysis on three principles. First, they argue that inflationary expectations are ...

Westland Ho

Paul Foot, 6 February 1986

... notice). The following day, part of the text of a pompous letter from the Solicitor-General, Sir Patrick Mayhew, to Heseltine informing him that he had made a few trivial mistakes in a letter he had written on the Westlands business to Lloyds Bank, was mysteriously leaked to the newspapers. Two days later, on 8 January, Sir Raymond Lygo, chief executive of ...

Woman in Love

Brigid Brophy, 7 February 1985

The Life of Jane Austen 
by John Halperin.
Harvester, 400 pp., December 1984, 0 7108 0518 7
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... taste was probably on the lowbrow side’. He shows not a sign of having read Patrick Piggott’s charming book The Innocent Diversion, of 1979, which establishes, from the sheet music she owned and copied, that Jane Austen was a highly proficient keyboard performer and identifies, as by Daniel Gottlieb Steilbelt, the noisy pianoforte ...

War for peace

Keith Kyle, 3 March 1983

A History of the United Nations. Vol. 1: The Years of Western Domination 
by Evan Luard.
Macmillan, 404 pp., £25, June 1982, 0 333 24389 7
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... sentiment that has been shared by many UN observers, particularly Americans such as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York in his book about the UN called A Dangerous Place, which followed his short but stormy tenure of the post of US Ambassador there. His sense of outrage was aroused by the lopsided majority which placed the moral force of the UN ...