What the Twist Did for the Peppermint Lounge

Dave Haslam: Club culture, 6 January 2000

Adventures in Wonderland: A Decade of Club Culture 
by Sheryl Garratt.
Headline, 335 pp., £7.99, May 1999, 0 7472 7680 3
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Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey 
by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton.
Headline, 408 pp., £14.99, November 1999, 0 7472 7573 4
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Saturday Night For Ever: The Story of Disco 
by Alan Jones and Jussi Kantonen.
Mainstream, 223 pp., £9.99, April 1999, 9781840181777
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DJ Culture 
by Ulf Poschardt.
Quartet, 473 pp., £13, January 1999, 0 7043 8098 6
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Energy Flash: A Journey through Rave Music and Dance Culture 
by Simon Reynolds.
Picador, 493 pp., £12.99, July 1998, 0 330 35056 0
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More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction 
by Kodwo Eshun.
Quartet, 208 pp., £10, March 1998, 0 7043 8025 0
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“... went on to open other clubs in Europe, while in Paris Chez Régine opened in 1960, catering to the self-styled beautiful people. The upmarket thrills of Régine’s enjoyed by the American jet-set in turn inspired New York’s Le Club, although it didn’t last long, closing soon after a new venue in New York took off in 1961: the Peppermint Lounge. The ...”

Kipling in South Africa

Dan Jacobson: Rudyard Kipling and Cecil Rhodes, 7 June 2007

“... of the two defeated republics; not to speak of the relatively early return to them of a measure of self-government. This last move he described as putting the Boers ‘into a position to uphold and expand their primitive lust for racial domination’ – a statement seized on by various British biographers and essayists as evidence of how concerned he was ...”

The Real Price of Everything

Hilary Mantel: The Many Lives of Elizabeth Marsh, 21 June 2007

The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History 
by Linda Colley.
HarperPress, 363 pp., £25, June 2007, 978 0 00 719218 2
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“... and between them the Crisps spent a lot of money. They were, Colley says, ‘young, divided, self-inventing individuals with something to prove’, and though they were hardy and experienced travellers they were not experienced in London society. There were two children, Burrish and Elizabeth Maria. A fashionable man-midwife was retained, and twice over ...”

Our Man

Perry Anderson: The Inglorious Career of Kofi Annan, 10 May 2007

The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power 
by James Traub.
Bloomsbury, 442 pp., £20, November 2006, 0 7475 8087 1
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Kofi Annan: A Man of Peace in a World of War 
by Stanley Meisler.
Wiley, 384 pp., £19.99, January 2007, 978 0 471 78744 0
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“... about the organisation, which has proved an intellectual sink-hole, down which swirl the drearily self-serving memoirs of its one-time functionaries and mind-numbing pieties from assorted well-wishers in the universities. There is a reason for the peculiar deadness of this output. The UN is a political entity without any independent will. If we set aside its ...”

One word says to its mate

Claire Harman: W.S. Graham, 4 October 2001

The Nightfisherman: Selected Letters of W.S. Graham 
edited by Michael Snow and Margaret Snow.
Carcanet, 401 pp., £12.95, November 1999, 1 85754 445 5
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“... makes flux an explicit theme as the narrator tries to identify the ‘ghostly constant’ of the self. It is deliberately ambitious in ways that weren’t readily perceived; critics seemed relieved that Graham had at last ‘found his voice’, though the poet was always more interested in evicting himself from each new position gained. ‘What do I write to ...”

Cyber-Jihad

Charles Glass: What Osama Said, 9 March 2006

The Secret History of al-Qaida 
by Abdel Bari Atwan.
Saqi, 256 pp., £16.99, February 2006, 0 86356 760 6
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Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror 
by Michael Scheuer.
Potomac, 307 pp., £11.95, July 2005, 1 57488 862 5
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Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden 
edited by Bruce Lawrence, translated by James Howarth.
Verso, 292 pp., £10.99, November 2005, 1 84467 045 7
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Osama: The Making of a Terrorist 
by Jonathan Randal.
Tauris, 346 pp., £9.99, October 2005, 1 84511 117 6
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“... benefactor of Israel and of the tyrants who rule the Islamic birthplace in Saudi Arabia. The four self-declared leaders pronounced that To kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty incumbent upon every Muslim in all countries, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Holy Mosque from their grip, so that ...”

Forget the Dylai Lama

Thomas Jones: Bob Dylan, 6 November 2003

Dylan's Visions of Sin 
by Christopher Ricks.
Viking, 517 pp., £25, October 2003, 9780670801336
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“... Donovan, a bit like Dan Bern without the sense of humour, or the critical distance. A.J. Weberman, self-styled Dylanologist, burrowed into the singer’s rubbish bins to try to make sense of him. And countless others have applied themselves to more conventional forms of criticism. Among the most deep and distinguished of this last kind of interpreter is ...”

Ave, Jeeves!

Emily Wilson: Rom(an) Com, 21 February 2008

Plautine Elements in Plautus 
by Eduard Fraenkel, translated by Tomas Drevikovsky and Frances Muecke.
Oxford, 459 pp., £79, November 2006, 0 19 924910 5
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Plautus: ‘Asinaria – The One about the Asses’ 
translated by John Henderson.
Wisconsin, 252 pp., £13.50, December 2006, 0 299 21994 1
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Terence: The Comedies 
translated by Peter Brown.
Oxford, 338 pp., £9.99, January 2008, 978 0 19 282399 1
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Terence: Comedies 
translated by Frederick Clayton.
Exeter, 290 pp., £45, January 2006, 0 85989 757 5
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“... think there could be no middle ground: between people and non-people. The humour may be seen as self-justificatory: if Plautus can imagine that slaves are just like doors, then there’s no harm in beating them up. But it may also seem symptomatic of a fear on the part of the slave-owning classes, that at least part of their property may be animate after ...”

Laptop Jihadi

Adam Shatz: Theoretician of al-Qaida, 20 March 2008

Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of al-Qaida Strategist Abu Musab al-Suri 
by Brynjar Lia.
Hurst, 510 pp., £27.50, November 2007, 978 1 85065 856 6
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“... current in which one would expect to find obedience rather than dissent, conformity rather than self-criticism, doctrinaire ideologues rather than introspective individuals’. But his story suggests that it is our expectations about that ‘current’ which need to be adjusted. If al-Suri remained in the good graces of al-Qaida, it’s probably because his ...”

Biff-Bang

Ferdinand Mount: Tariffs before Trump, 14 August 2025

Exile Economics: If Globalisation Fails 
by Ben Chu.
Basic Books, 310 pp., £25, May, 978 1 3998 1716 5
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No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China and Helping America’s Workers 
by Robert Lighthizer.
Broadside, 384 pp., £25, August 2023, 978 0 06 328213 1
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“... breeding in men’s souls knavish and tricky ways, it renders the city faithless and loveless.’ Self-sufficiency, autarkeia, was always preferable, trade at best a necessary evil. Only Pericles, according to Thucydides, had positive things to say about an open commercial society: The greatness of our city brings it about that all the good things from all ...”

Doctor of the Incurable

Oliver Cussen: Marat Unmade, 23 July 2026

Jean-Paul Marat: Prophet of Terror 
by Keith Michael Baker.
Chicago, 930 pp., £40, November 2025, 978 0 226 82092 7
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Murder in the Rue Marat: A Case of Art in Revolution 
by Thomas Crow.
Princeton, 176 pp., £25, November 2025, 978 0 691 27444 7
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“... two essays, on the soul and on man, that showed a misanthropic worldview (society is rooted in self-preservation and violence, ‘pity is a forged sentiment’) and a readiness to mock the ignorance of scientific authorities while passing off familiar arguments as his own. The essays earned him notoriety, if not glory; Diderot and Voltaire wrote ...”

Après Brexit

Ferdinand Mount, 20 February 2020

“... political landscape, the nation and national pride bulk ever larger, bolstering our sense of self-worth, tickling up our resentments. This emboldened nationalism has a weather-beaten old ally in the shape of the popular newspapers, which are jubilant about Brexit, not without reason regarding its achievement as largely their own work – ‘yes, we did ...”

Grumpy in October

Jonathan Parry: The Anglo-French Project, 21 April 2022

Entente Imperial: British and French Power in the Age of Empire 
by Edward J. Gillin.
Amberley, 288 pp., £20, February 2022, 978 1 3981 0289 7
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“... back to protectionism.The rapidity of technological progress also occasionally undermined British self-confidence about its invulnerability to French military power. The Crimean War made it clear that, despite the Waterloo myth, Britain wasn’t very good at fighting. By January 1855, France had four times as many soldiers in the field. They were also better ...”

In the Superstate

Wolfgang Streeck: What is technopopulism?, 27 January 2022

Technopopulism: The New Logic of Democratic Politics 
by Christopher J. Bickerton and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti.
Oxford, 256 pp., £75, February 2021, 978 0 19 880776 6
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“... of various sorts in the populism of the right. While elite rule divides the people into self-seeking factions, populism unites them, in a struggle against those who claim to know better than the masses what the masses need.In their attempt to understand today’s post-democratic politics, Christopher Bickerton and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti note ...”

Quickening, or How to Plot an Abortion

Clair Wills: The Abortion Plot, 16 March 2023

“... and vomiting. There is no division between the public and private in her world, and therefore no self to do the choosing with. There is no possibility for her of making the choice to be the kind of woman who isn’t from the wrong side, who won’t be the kind of woman who inevitably gets pregnant and has an abortion. She’s been ‘fucked from all ...”