“... is being demanded is national, social and political self-determination: in concrete terms this means a humanistic social democracy. Even if fear results in a Unionist majority, all are agreed that things will never be the same again. And if Scotland wins, perhaps the tired lull of English politics will also be disrupted. Tariq Ali As I debate what to ... ”
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Period Pain
Patricia Beer, 9 June 1994
“... of course highly topical. The publication of Aristocrats has more or less coincided with that of David Cannadine’s Aspects of Aristocracy: Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain, which follows some of the themes of his earlier book, Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Tillyard’s modishly-titled contribution is an enormous account of four ... ”
Action and Suffering
Marilyn Butler, 16 April 1981
Ideas and the Novel
by Mary McCarthy.
Weidenfeld, 121 pp., £4.95, February 1981,9780297778967 Show More
by Mary McCarthy.
Weidenfeld, 121 pp., £4.95, February 1981,
“... attorneys and Parisian attorneys and how that affects the jailing of a man for debt.’ By such means, the illusion that a world has been invented by the novelist is kept subordinate to the illusion that the real world is being mirrored by him. When the artist quietly demotes art in this way, he insinuates that life matters more than books. He makes the ... ”
Celtic Revisionism
Patrick Parrinder, 24 July 1986
A Short History of Irish Literature
by Seamus Deane.
Hutchinson, 282 pp., £15, March 1986,0 09 161360 4 Show More
by Seamus Deane.
Hutchinson, 282 pp., £15, March 1986,
The Peoples of Ireland
by Liam de Paor.
Hutchinson, 344 pp., £15, April 1986,9780091561406 Show More
by Liam de Paor.
Hutchinson, 344 pp., £15, April 1986,
The Complete Dramatic Works
by Samuel Beckett.
Faber, 476 pp., £12.50, April 1986,0 571 13821 7 Show More
by Samuel Beckett.
Faber, 476 pp., £12.50, April 1986,
The Beckett Country: An Exhibition for Samuel Beckett’s 80th Birthday
by Eoin O’Brien and James Knowlson.
Black Cat, 97 pp., £5, May 1986,0 948050 03 9 Show More
by Eoin O’Brien and James Knowlson.
Black Cat, 97 pp., £5, May 1986,
“... It is ironic that Deane misses Montague’s Wordsworthian reverence for the dolmens, which by no means belong to a ‘dead’ landscape (whatever that might be), and ironic too that he expresses his distaste for these monuments of Irish prehistory by means of a metaphor derived from ancient Greek mythology. Above all, what ... ”
Humanitarian Juggernaut
Alex de Waal, 22 June 1995
Mercy under Fire: War and the Global Humanitarian Community
by Larry Minear and Thomas Weiss.
Westview, 247 pp., £44.50, July 1995,0 8133 2567 6 Show More
by Larry Minear and Thomas Weiss.
Westview, 247 pp., £44.50, July 1995,
“... of enforcement has further swivelled the concerns of IHL – ‘protection’ is ensured not by means of discreet diplomacy, but with troops and tanks. UN Security Council Resolutions 770 on former Yugoslavia and 794 on Somalia (both adopted in 1992) pioneered a new doctrine: the physical protection of the humanitarians. This was the prime mandate given to ... ”
Here is a little family
Amit Chaudhuri, 9 July 1992
The Law of White Space
by Giorgio Pressburger.
Granta, 172 pp., £12.99, March 1992,0 14 014221 5 Show More
by Giorgio Pressburger.
Granta, 172 pp., £12.99, March 1992,
“... nitty-gritty of finding out, through marriage, what marriage is about, and what raising a child means. Here is a little family, already magically complete, and only in need of a man. The charm and potential eeriness of this situation could not have been possible fifty years ago: for then there were too few divorces, and when they occurred, they ... ”
Vileness
Michael Wood: Di Benedetto’s Style, 5 April 2018
Zama
by Antonio Di Benedetto, translated by Esther Allen.
NYRB, 198 pp., £9.99, June 2017,978 1 59017 717 4 Show More
by Antonio Di Benedetto, translated by Esther Allen.
NYRB, 198 pp., £9.99, June 2017,
Nest in the Bones
by Antonio Di Benedetto, translated by Martina Broner.
Archipelago, 275 pp., £15.99, May 2017,978 0 914671 72 5 Show More
by Antonio Di Benedetto, translated by Martina Broner.
Archipelago, 275 pp., £15.99, May 2017,
“... of Di Benedetto’s style; not so easy to live with what that style chooses to show us. David Pérez Vega, in a blog of 2011, finds in The Silencer a phrase that ‘appears to be a synthesis of Di Benedetto’s reflections on existence’: ‘How can they ignore the essential fact, that error is incorporated into the very roots of humankind?’ For ... ”
A UK Bill of Rights?
Tom Hickman, 24 March 2022
“... of the court. The UK and the other 46 states that have ratified the ECHR have agreed that the ECHR means what the court says it means.The consultation nonetheless seeks – sometimes with barely disguised desperation – to find a way to achieve the unachievable. The Human Rights Act defines the rights to which it gives ... ”
Who shall we blame it on?
Yitzhak Laor: Lament for the Israeli Left, 20 February 2003
“... parties that offer only military solutions? No, the average reader would reply, yet here normality means indifference and indifference is a shield through which information does not penetrate. Thousands of Israelis have participated in the Occupation, thousands have done their bit to implement the Oslo Accords, have measured out their checkpoint ... ”
A Toast at the Trocadero
Terry Eagleton: D.J. Taylor, 18 February 2016
The Prose Factory: Literary Life in England since 1918
by D.J. Taylor.
Chatto, 501 pp., £25, January 2016,978 0 7011 8613 5 Show More
by D.J. Taylor.
Chatto, 501 pp., £25, January 2016,
“... or two feeble excuses for his hostility to the study of post-Chaucerian English at Oxford. Lord David Cecil’s ‘gentlemanly and rather old-fashioned scholarship’ is duly noted, but ‘this is not to disparage Lord David’s accomplishments, either as critic or biographer.’ Why not? Even Empson’s expulsion from ... ”
Does marmalade exist?
Terry Eagleton, 27 January 2022
The Concept of the Social: Scepticism, Idleness and Utopia
by Malcolm Bull.
Verso, 243 pp., £16.99, October 2021,978 1 84467 293 6 Show More
by Malcolm Bull.
Verso, 243 pp., £16.99, October 2021,
“... accept state power because they are grateful not to be hanged for stealing a bar of soap. He means that you need look no further for the reason nations are not plunged into ceaseless internal warfare than the fact that those who govern do less harm than they might. In a quietly dramatic move, the usual leftist case about hegemony, ideology, the securing ... ”
The Auto-Erotic Device and the Whisky Bottle
Peter Campbell, 27 June 1991
Dance till the stars come down
by Frances Spalding.
Hodder, 271 pp., £25, May 1991,0 340 48555 8 Show More
by Frances Spalding.
Hodder, 271 pp., £25, May 1991,
“... make of his sailors, like the one who leans on a table spread with good things in Elizabeth David’s Book of Mediterranean Food. The housewives doubtless thought they were nice lads; in life and art the physical types which attracted Minton were butch. The boys in Hockney’s Cavafy illustrations would not have stepped so easily or so politely onto Mrs ... ”
A Life of Its Own
Jonathan Coe, 24 February 1994
The Kenneth Williams Diaries
edited by Russell Davies.
HarperCollins, 827 pp., £20, June 1993,0 00 255023 7 Show More
edited by Russell Davies.
HarperCollins, 827 pp., £20, June 1993,
“... Many people would say – there stands English comedy,’ David Frost is reported to have declaimed, as Frankie Howerd and Kenneth Williams stood side by side on his doorstep. Williams was unimpressed. ‘I thought to myself, “Then many people would be lacking in perception,” but shouted drunken goodbyes and reeled down the street into a taxi ... ”
Liking it and living it
Hugh Tulloch, 14 September 1989
“... equally illuminating in charting their subjects’ partial successes and partial failures. Thus David Hume attacked the 18th-century myth of an ancient British constitution and warned his readers of the disastrous political consequences of ignoring their history. By reminding them of the recent emergence of constitutional government he wished to point to ... ”
Losing the War
Robert Dallek, 23 November 1989
A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
by Neil Sheehan.
Cape, 861 pp., £15.95, April 1989,0 224 02648 8 Show More
by Neil Sheehan.
Cape, 861 pp., £15.95, April 1989,
“... fix the problem before its cost in blood and treasure agitated public questions. As the journalist David Halberstam emphasised in 1972 in The Best and the Brightest, the experts were less than wise. More important, the making of far-reaching overseas commitments without a Congressional and public consensus was a formula for political failure at home and for ... ”
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