Isn’t London hell?

Seamus Perry: Evelyn Waugh, 10 August 2023

Brideshead Revisited 
by Evelyn Waugh.
Penguin, 480 pp., £16.99, October 2022, 978 0 241 58531 3
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Decline and Fall 
by Evelyn Waugh.
Penguin, 320 pp., £14.99, October 2022, 978 0 241 58529 0
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A Handful of Dust 
by Evelyn Waugh.
Penguin, 336 pp., £14.99, October 2022, 978 0 241 58527 6
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Vile Bodies 
by Evelyn Waugh.
Penguin, 304 pp., £14.99, October 2022, 978 0 241 58528 3
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Sword of Honour 
by Evelyn Waugh.
Penguin, 928 pp., £18.99, October 2022, 978 0 241 58532 0
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... is much fun to be had from a house with rooms named after Arthurian characters (‘The ceiling of Morgan le Fay was not in perfect repair’); but there is genuine reverence here, too, as ‘Gothic’ comes to stand, as it did for Ruskin, for everything that gets destroyed by modernity. Tony likes attending church on Sunday and chatting in a paternalistic way ...

Making It Up

Raphael Samuel, 4 July 1996

Raymond Williams 
by Fred Inglis.
Routledge, 333 pp., £19.99, October 1995, 0 415 08960 3
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... his job, his students with ducking tutorials. It is possible that Inglis began this book in good faith and then came across things he did not like. Or that he was waylaid by his informants, the Cambridge ones in particular, who seem to have used the occasion to settle old scores. Perhaps he grew envious of his subject, and of that ‘terrific ...

What are we telling the nation?

David Edgar: Thoughts about the BBC, 7 July 2005

Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC 
by Georgina Born.
Vintage, 352 pp., £10.99, August 2005, 0 09 942893 8
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Building Public Value: Renewing the BBC for a Digital World 
BBC, 135 pp.Show More
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... the public what they felt it needed; now they needed to satisfy its wants. The BBC’s collapse of faith in its own judgment had a predictable effect on programming, which immediately became imitative of what was seen to have worked for the competition. This process can be seen in drama, documentary and even history programmes, but reached its climax in the ...

The Arrestables

Jeremy Harding: Extinction Rebellion, 16 April 2020

... and environmental research. The science contingent co-exists – and overlaps – with several faith-based strands that go well beyond Quakerism and the radical fringes of Anglican Christianity. Among them are Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, atrophying strains of Marxism, and animism. ‘Spirituality’ is a word you often hear from XR members, and it has many ...

One Summer in America

Eliot Weinberger, 26 September 2019

... the lack of attention from guards’. He says: ‘I know you. You’re a father, you’re a man of faith. You can’t approve of that.’ Pence replies: ‘Well, no American, no American, should approve of this mass influx of people coming across our border.’ Pence claims that when he visited one camp ‘we spoke to cheerful children who were watching ...

When Bitcoin Grows Up

John Lanchester: What is Money?, 21 April 2016

... money whose value has been willed into being by the state. The value of fiat money is an act of faith. There are quirks to this. In the case of the pound coin, if we ask how much it’s worth, the answer is obvious: a pound is worth a pound. It shouldn’t be, though. According to the Royal Mint, which actually makes the stuff, 3 per cent of all pound coins ...